[Stoves] Malawi Philips stove intervention study and Nikhil's 28 sins of insolence about GACC/WHO (Re: Ron Larson)

[Traveller]

Tom and list: This is too long a reply to Ron Larson's list of 28
objections on 8 December 2016 (cc'ing Crispin) to my short post on 7
December 2016 - Re: report with dissapointing results from cleaner
cookstoves (Andrew) - Malawi.

I have little problem with Ron's complaints against me personally, though I
have addressed them lower down this post. However, it is the Malawi study
itself -- and the "stoves and health" mindset or mania behind it - that
ought to give all on this list a serious pause, my crass impudence
notwithstanding.

Others may have forgotten the Malawi paper from Lancet (in this week's
print edition); there was nothing to it, and it seems Ron himself didn't
read it (though several others did).

As I note below, GACC and others also found that study basically "junk".
Ron appears to admire "highly qualified" junk issued by "authorities".
Opinions apart, there is a serious danger that such blather from
epidemiologists that possibly there have to be lower emission rates than
the Philips stove will drive public opinion and money away from work on
"better biomass stoves" that meet the desires of the users (in and outside
homes).

Anil said "all fuels are dirty, only excellent combustion makes them
clean". But "excellent combustion" is a matter of handling the stove and
the fuel, and there can be spikes of pollutant emissions. To set Emission
Rate Targets to achieve an IAQ Guideline is a gross error, as is selection
of IAQ Guidelines only for Household Fuel Combustion PM2.5. Back in late
summer of 2001 I had cautioned against using questionable epidemiology for
the purposes of designing solid fuel cookstoves, and now I am ready to
throw in the towel and claim that the WHO, EPA, UNF influence on the ISO
IWA process is a cruel tragedy for billions of people. Rich people - say in
America - never had to suffer such theology of "premature mortality from
HAP" in choosing their stoves and fuels or foods and beverages; the poor
now must entertain the theory class about health, climate, women's
empowerment.

Ron and I go back ages. I have learned a lot from him. Too bad to part
company.

ANYWAY, I wasn't going to send this except that last night I went to see
and hear Chef Jose Andres and GACC CEO. The Chef is a bozo who put up
laughable slides and blabbered on about three billion people, x% of this
and y% of that, and pretended to be a climate scientist (ocean temperatures
near the Galapagos islands). But that is what GACC needs him for. I give
him credit, though, for answering a question about community cooking -
"Better for anthropologists to work

On the other hand, GCC CEO delivered a superlative performance. Wonderful.
I am a fan now. She is an impressive speaker and can probably persuade
many. Indeed, she reminded me of the last Washington personality I had
heard - in another auditorium, across the street nearly 20 years ago.

She failed to convince me of the relevance of IWA or the multi-pronged
"Evidence Base" research. Or about stoves reducing sexual violence (I am
not denying it; I first heard about it while roaming around Addis mountains
in early 1993).

In fact, her "common sense" statements about cooking militated against the
research bandwagon about "performance" and "results" as defined by experts
of, and in, groupthink. (She said, "On health front, we have good initial
information. We need more." I don't think it will come from HAPIT or
studies like this Malawi one. I also liked her saying that clean cooking is
not an end goal, just a means, to many SDGs for instance; I don't think
just some haphazard surveys will quantify these "benefits". It is a mockery
of social sciences to reduce cooking to oxidation, and stoves to
deforestation or rapes.)

I once again wonder if she was just handed down a bad recipe, stove and
tools she had no role in choosing and has become Hillary, Jr.  (Hillary was
also fed puff puris (filled with hot air coming off the deep-fry pan).

I hope she can be freed of the blather she has been forced to parrot. But
then she won't make her fund-raising targets and commissions.

At least, stop this "clean" pretense. "Cleaner" is clean enough.
------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Ron:

I am sad that you are mad. I waited over a month, hoping you would not be
so angry. But now that you have said what I reply to you is irrelevant and
you wouldn't react, I suppose I might as well shower as many invectives as
I can and see how much madder can you get! :-)

I am a dog; I already admitted. I am a '60s boy and question authority, why
don't you?

************

I will get to your charges of my unforgivable sins, but first, I am
surprised that you didn't find it disturbing that a bunch of "highly
qualified" professionals found Philips stoves in Malawi not effective
enough to have health benefits they chose to go out looking for. They
<http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(16)32507-7.pdf>
instead say,

*"It is also possible that the cookstoves used simply did not reduce
emissions sufficiently to have an effect." *


THAT, more than anything I could have said and can say, is sure to have
detrimental effect on what you call "stove science", your purported moral
touchstone.

And even this didn't bother you?

"*There is insufficient evidence on which to recommend replacing open fires
with biomass-fuelled cookstoves for the prevention of pneumonia in young
children in settings where biomass fuels are burned in open fires for
cooking."*


I haven't seen a Philips stove - maybe at an exhibit in Nairobi in 2011,
but not in operation. I have no idea if users like it. But it is shocking
that a bunch of know-nothings think their silly study hold any
"implications". It is not as if "prevention of pneumonia in young children"
is the only - or even a significant - consideration for replacing open
fires (which they do admit led to burns and even a death).

Even GACC criticized this Malawi study and noted criticism by Ezzati and
Baumgartner, plus the fact that by the end of the study, "intervention
households" were not really using the Philips stoves at all (for whatever
reason).


“Based on the type of stove evaluated in the Malawi trial, the lack of
impact on child pneumonia is not surprising.  While this stove may offer a
range of environmental, climate, and lifestyle benefits, the stove does not
meet WHO indoor air quality guideline
<http://www.who.int/indoorair/guidelines/hhfc/en/> levels expected to
reduce child pneumonia under the best performing laboratory conditions.


Who is WHO to set IAQ Guideline? On the basis of what epidemiology?
GoBbleDygook? And why for household fuel combustion alone, as if that's all
there is to IAQ? Is this preaching new religion to the heathen?

And who assigned IWA Tiers to Philips stoves in GACC's Clean Cooking Catalog
<http://catalog.cleancookstoves.org/stoves>?

Why aren't stove scientists who know anything about cooking up in arms over
this nonsense of Tiers of Performance in IWA
<https://cleancookstoves.org/binary-data/DOCUMENT/file/000/000/6-1.pdf> and WHO
Indoor Air Quality Guidelines
<http://www.who.int/indoorair/guidelines/hhfc/en/> that mysteriously --
rather, illegitimately -- link concentrations to stove emission rates and
other selected performance values that a real cook may not give a hoot
about?

[Yes, I have no shame criticizing WHO DG who writes in the Preface
"Currently, although there are many global and national initiatives aimed
at ensuring access for all households to clean and modern energy, *there is
a lack of clarity about what technologies and fuels can be considered clean
and safe*." and then goes on to justify the guidelines as "The guidelines
were developed and *peer-reviewed by scientists from all over the world and
the recommendations were informed by a rigorous review of all currently
available scientific knowledge on this subject*."

I have read those reviews, and they have zilch to do with cooking. They
treat a cookstove and a lung as oxidation boxes. Even so, they have not
examined all the primary literature, instead going on to assign literature
quality labels of "strong", "moderate" and "low" in a haphazard,
self-serving manner. There is rot in WHO governance and arguably also in
ISO governance.

In the absence of "*policies for the period of transition from current
practices to community-wide use of clean fuels and household energy
technologies, recognizing that intermediate steps will be needed for some
time to come among lower income and more rural homes reliant on solid fuels*,"
there is no sense in setting Emission Rate Targets and then cooking up
compliance with Guidelines. They are "guidelines", for heaven's sake; a
stove standard cannot be based in the absence of an IAQ standard.]

************************
Any claims about particular "stoves" and particular "disease" are
contextual and epidemiological results subject to too many qualifications.
Responses to exposures to different irritants, pollutants, and disease
agents vary and have different lags.

The generalized claim of HAP and premature mortality is nonsense because a)
there is no data on pollutant exposure (nor fuel quantity, quality,
combustion method) and b) the methods of allocating DALYs to "air
pollution" and then to HAP PM2.5 are untenable.

Central to GBD (2010), et cetera is Burnett et al. (2014)
<https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1307049/> assuming equitoxicity and
"integrating" (i.e., confusing, which to me means fusing in order to con)
different curves for different exposure profiles and different species.
Sorry, doesn't pass laugh test. Did you read my 10 September 2016 post on
this list addressed to you - "$/DALY or $ for dalliances? (Re: Ron on WHO)"
(I hope you also read Kirk Smith's Millions Dead paper.)

WHO then abuses the dubious GBD exercise to cook up IAQ Guidelines just for
Household Fuel Combustion (as if that is all there is to IAQ), and the IWA
draws up Emission Rate Targets for several Tiers of "Stove Performance" as
if a) there is any conceivable way to backtrack from IAQ (annual average or
max 24-hour) for PM2.5 (not just from HFC) into hourly emission rates and
b) these performance criteria matter to cooks for the purpose of cooking
and many other uses.

The Malawi case is like that MIT paper (Hanna, Duflo, Greenstone) four
years ago - a mindless RCT study picking some random "improved stove" and
then finding that it didn't deliver the result the researchers expected
(they oughtn't have in the first place).

For the MIT cons, they picked a stove design certified by Indian MNRE and
recommended by it or some NGO. (The original developer had long abandoned
that design; might have designed it only for meeting MNRE performance
standards).

Someone should go probe the sorry history of experts setting performance
standards or targets and testing protocols hoping to deliver fantastic
results by ignoring cooks and cooking. GACC, WHO, EPA and ISO/IWA are
repeating the same mistakes of the past in India. (And likely to go the
same way - Up in Smoke, with some pockets being filled in the meantime.)

These Malawi researchers went and picked a Philips stove that GACC now says
does not meet WHO IAQ Guidelines.

Who in the world can ever say that a stove meets or does not meet IAQ
Guideline of annual average or three 24-hour average max? By modeling? I am
surprised stove designers or users were not revolted by this fake
"science".

In both the MIT/India and this Malawi cases, the users were not using the
"improved stoves" as they were meant to be and then the RCTs showed that
they didn't produce results the foolish researchers were demanding.

I leave aside the problems with RCTs.  Not every RCT study is worth a dime,
even if a million dollars have been wasted on it by, ahem, Cantabrigians or
Liverpudlians.

************
The intellectual smoke should've given you and others on this list severe
asthma attacks by now.

This "stoves and health" mania of GACC, EPA, WHO, BAMG has harmed and will
harm development of usable solid fuel stoves - specific to contexts and
chemistry - than you have understood so far.

"Clean cookstoves"!! Bah, humbug!! Certainly not as certified by these PhDs
and MDs. Not Philips stoves, and perhaps NO SOLID FUEL stoves (as if
pollution was sitting idle in fuels until liberated by human touch) might
meet these self-styled arbiters of "stoves and health", purveyors of "clean
fuel" (intellectual snake oil gel).

It really hurts me when you call me "anti stove development" while you
praise pedantry of pundits by pundits who want not a more usable stove than
the Philips stove was in this experiment but a "lower emission" stove. As
if pneumonia hides in emissions.

To give you an example similar to this Malawi study - "The results add to
growing evidence that *replacing solid fuels may not be sufficient to
eliminate the harmful effects of indoor air pollution and that a transition
to very clean fuels (e.g. natural gas, ethanol; much harder goal) may be
necessary*." (Kiros Berhane, Indoor Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease
<http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/133/24/2342>, Editorial, Circulation,
13 June 2016).

If this holds up, your biochar stoves may only be for producing biochar,
not for cooking.

Tehran will have to shift to gas for transport, industry, power. Not that
gas is absolutely "clean"; you would ask for Carbon Dioxide Removal. (Is
your preferred solution Atomic Cafe
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atomic_Cafe> with nuclear toasters
<http://www.geekwire.com/2017/nathan-myhrvold-nuclear-nova-toasters/>, er
Bill Gates' Terrapower?)

It is GACC and WHO who are driving any "cook-friendly" stove development
into the ground because they have a - um, a thing - against solid fuels.
(You are only against coal. You ought to be alarmed at this junk science.)

I thought you were going to present "the other side" - of whatever. I don't
see anything debatable; you haven't given me a summary you promised.

You are aggrieved "*how seriously Nikhil is hurting our international
development efforts on this list."*

Yeah, right. What a grandiose ambition of this List after 30 years of
demonstrated failure. (By your own admission, you came to stoves late in
your NREL career. I came to "improved stoves" literature back in 1983 and
to "improved stoves" themselves around 1965.) Some people need to be
disabused of the notion that biomass stovers of US have made even a dint in
"international development efforts". (This is not to denigrate the work of
individuals and individual organizations, just that we have to be modest in
our self-praise.)

Again, how many trillions of meals did "better biomass stoves" cook in the
last 30 years and what did the users say - that they saved time, reduced
drudgery, saved trees, saved humanity, empowered women?

Kirk Smith said in 2012 that the term "improved stoves" should be retired.
Nobody can question "better stoves", but I wonder how many better stoves
have been found usable (except for Mirt mtad and all the gas/electric
appliances). He has written in favor of LPG and electricity and said that
no biomass stove yet meets the criterion of "truly health protective".

For all you know, GACC, USEPA, Gates Foundation, and WHO may have given up
on this ideology of "free biomass" and "renewable biomass" and are driving
solid fuel Emission Rate Targets to "truly health protective levels" that
cannot be met except by processed biomass.

You and most members of this list ought to now suspect - as I do - that the
entire IWA process originated in a fog - or smog - of baseless fantasies
about stove testing without regard to any real physical science, or cooking
of foods, as it relates to any aspect of individual health. WHO has abused
the entire

Let me repeat - "It's all in fuel chemistry, air chemistry and
atmospheric chemistry." Or expand to add - "soil chemistry, water
chemistry, fertilizer chemistry, biochemistry, agrochemistry."

Anything and everything about disease incidence or productivity (absence of
disease, broadly defined, in all biota, and consequent growth of economic
potential) is basically about chemistry.

Not the "way of life" the "super-human" heroes and heroines IHME folks
enjoy with their computers ("stoves") that cook up data without chemistry,
physics, culture of disease or its prevention/treatment.





************Now to your litany of my impudence. *I don't mind being called
a "climate denier". Since I was prepared to put that on my cap during Obama
years, I should wear it now during TPP (Tillerson, Pruitt, Perry) regime. I
might get millions like UNF Inc. did.

No, I will wear a GACC t-shirt. I didn't see any for sale at this seminar -
"Interconnectivity of Cookstoves"

What next - you will call me a Communist? Or a non-Christian Indian
(whatever that may mean)? :-)

*As to y*our blanket charges:

"a.  Essentially no messages that advance stove science (the word science
being used here intentionally)

*** a. I am not a stove scientist. I was trained as a chemist and I am a
cook. More relevant than what you can say about the army of "highly
qualified" professionals who can't see themselves in mirrors. ***

b.  Negative comments about especially GACC (Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves) and especially its CEO (Radha Muthiah)- about which/whom I have
seen no evidence he knows much.

*** b. I find pronouncements of GACC and its CEO - a curious title for the
Executive Director of UNF, Inc - rather funny. You don't know what I do or
not know about GACC but of course you are one of those who believe absence
of evidence is evidence of absence, be it PM2.5 equitoxicity or Nikhil's
words.  I have already stated that the CEO is doing a commendable job
assigned to her - propaganda for fund-raising. That's what UNF does and
that's what Hillary wanted her to do. She has all my sympathies; Washington
is a weird town and I am sure she knows it. I have made no negative
comments about her person, just her position. (I finally saw her last night
and as I said above, I became an instant fan. She has great stage presence.
I would look like an idiot arguing with her.) ***

c.  Negative comments on Hillary Clinton, whose work on stoves has been
wonderful - and I never saw mentioned during the campaign

*** c. Well, she has had bad support staff, hasn't she? Hillary is also a
public figure but in her own words "a lousy cook
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/why-hillary-clinton-eats-a-hot-pepper-every-single-day/2016/06/18/a8cbb5bc-2f16-11e6-9de3-6e6e7a14000c_story.html>".
She is a hothead - so am I - and eats a hot pepper every day, as do I. I
also believe "“everything in moderation, including moderation.” I admire
her and would like her to settle back in Washington. I already offered a
suggestion that she return and take control of GACC, in a partnership with
Ivanka. A billion dollars are needed. GACC CEO will get her cut. A lot of
work needs to be done. GACC needs to dump WHO and NIH, that's all.  EPA may
be lost for four years anyway. NIH has found its savior in Gates. WHO needs
to have Intellectual Air Quality Guidelines internally. ***

d.  Nonsense statements about DALY’s - a standard method in the health
community for addressing health impacts of all kinds - and especially
stoves  (My last message listed all the acronyms in this world - with
cites.)"

*** d. My friend, I am afraid you don't know zilch about DALYs. It doesn't
measure "health impacts" of any kind, leave alone stoves. DALYs serve
propaganda purposes but in any event, just remember Kirk Smith -
"attributable" does not mean "avoidable". Baselines matter. What HAPIT
does, only uppity HAPITters know. I would have told you except that I am
shutting off after one note as I promised. I will be glad to exchange
e-mails privately. ***


------

ND to RWL 1 and 2.  Scientists do regress into infantilism. Such behavior
has enormous costs - direct (money and time provided) as well as indirect
(resulting from neglect of more relevant work based on hard data instead of
cooked up variety.) Adults holding cuddly stuffed bears in bed is benign.
When they start saying that the bears are live, and comforting because they
are real, psychiatrists need to be consulted. If scientists find my jabs
insulting and fear for their reputation, ditto. Challenge me on my facts or
take sedatives.

ND to RWL 3: Yes, details depend on the price to consultants. Some
information is handy and can be provided free of cost to the recipient. One
reason why WHO data, once cooked up, have been used to generate IHME
GoBleDygook. Policy-relevant actual data are difficult to define and more
so to develop and use.

Just because "peer-reviewed" - "pal reviewed" - horse manure exists does
not make it good enough fuel (unless the stove is very forgiving and very
efficient at the same time.) And yes, consultants do give advice according
to price. Why do you think I keep asking for a few million dollars? And why
do you think there is an army of mercenaries ready on the horses of WBTs?

ND to RWL 4 and 5: I stand by my comment on the Malawi study which
"was expected to show children are less likely to die of pneumonia if they
live in a home where food is cooked on a smoke-free stove rather than an
open fire." Too many confounding factors. Remember, for all 100+ years of
transitioning to smoke-free stoves, there is no convincing evidence that
the incidence of child pneumonia in the rich countries declined because
children were living in homes where food was cooked on a smoke-free stove.
Epidemiologists are on a trip. Malawi and Malawians are good targets for
the neo-imperialists.

ND to RWL 6 and 7: I have no qualms insulting 15 British professionals, nor
any interest in perpetuating their nonsense of "stoves and health".
Dismissals are deserved. I will be happy if this charade of "knowledge
development" ended, the sooner the better. Does anybody else have a problem
with "Emissions from uncontrolled combustion of fuels occur within "homes"
as well as other cooking places, and they spread "outdoors" where exposures
can occur to the poor as well as non-poor."? How much "poverty" and
"exposures" did these 15 cognoscenti - or for that matter anybody else -
measure to inform GoBbleDygook? (Wait till I get around to Murray-Lopez
1993 and 1996.)

The problem is with people claiming that HAP "kills". No. All that GBD says
is that x million premature mortality or y billion DALYs (of cohorts dead)
are attributable to exposure to HAP as a "risk factor". Anybody can cook up
methods to allocate blame to this or that. When presumptions and
allocations are marketed as "knowledge", science degenerates into
fetishism. Read Kirk Smith - "attributable" is not "avoidable", and cohorts
are different.

ND to RWL 8 and RWL 9: I confess this was vile, crass insult. I like making
fun of academics and their poverty tourism for the sake of getting enough
approvals to publish in Lancet. (Read Lancet carefully, please. There is a
lot in that journal.) If you think the hypothesis "replacing open fires
with cleaner burning biomass-fuelled cookstoves would reduce pneumonia
incidence in young children" is not laughable on first impression, you need
to talk to a pediatrician.

These hi-falutin' experts have nothing better to do than provide dark
entertainment at tax-payers' cost? They can all collect in unventilated
smokeshops and praise each other's work, puffing their chests that you call
them "highly qualified". Perhaps. "Highly qualified" should be applied to
their results, and guess what, they indeed are honest and humble enough to
do just that:

"*Baseline data showed that in addition to almost exclusive use of biomass
fuels for cooking, exposure to smoke from other sources including burning
of rubbish, tobacco, and income generation activities was a common
day-to-day experience. Additionally, as cookstoves were only issued to
households that had a resident child younger than 5 years, exposure to
smoke from neighbours’ or relatives’ cooking fires is likely*...  It is
thus possible that these other air pollution exposures would have negated
any potential beneficial impact of the cookstove intervention and that *had
even cleaner burning cookstoves been used, they would be unlikely to have
had an impact. ....There was a high incidence of serious adverse events
unrelated to cooking across the trial population reflecting the expected
range and frequency of serious childhood illnesses seen in rural Malawi*."


These considerations might have occurred to any Malawian nurse. (I just met
a Ugandan lactation specialist in a hospital here; should have asked her.
Even I would have said this for a 10% cut on the grant. I have walked
through Blantyre slums and Malawi villages, where my car once broke down
coming back from a sugar ethanol refinery)

The point is, many of these studies are excuses to wander into blind alleys
to just confirm that they are blind. Anybody at the entrance would've told
these experts that their hypotheses do not meet a laugh test.

Still, I respect their integrity. Lack of common sense - what I called
"eyes and brains" - is not a mortal sin, though it seems to be a necessary
condition for marketing papers these days.

ND on RWL 10-11: Gill is a lousy reporter, and his editors ought to have
some sense. A picture is worth more than ten Lancet articles.

ND on RWL 12-14. Gill's allegation "UN-backed" is a lie.

It is relevant that UN Foundation is a private enterprise with venal
objective (it is entitled to its pretensions). I have met none of GACC
staff and feel pity that they have to carry the burden of EPA and State
rampage. If they don't know that they are not "uber nuts", they need to
know it.

It is only you (Ron) who thinks I impugn this whole List as "gullible". For
clarity, a gullible person does not know that s/he is gullible. (Sometimes
even the glib don't know they are glib.) I am sure there are people on this
list who know who is what.

I feel sorry that you need press badly. Call Marc Gunther and Vaishnavi
Chandrashekhar. Or call UNF, Gates Foundation, who both fund WHO. Or
Michael Greenstone; he knows how to get free publicity, as does GACC CEO.
Or Jose Andres and other State culinary diplomats of yesteryears
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/chefs-are-the-new-diplomats/2012/08/31/d67b5714-ead3-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html?utm_term=.2b86d2adb3b5>.
Rope in WWF into stove science. Or Jeff Bezos.

ND on RWL 15 and 16: I have written enough on GACC propaganda, beginning
with the claim that HAP causes deaths. But I fully understand. GACC is paid
to propagandize.

As for Hillary gang, you need to be a Washingtonian. (I was and remain a
Hillary supporter, but politics have nothing to do with stoves, does it?)

UNF is a racket, like many tax-payer financed (via tax exemptions) fancy
charities. It is not for nothing that UNF Executive Director earned nearly
$1 m in four years, a pittance compared to what Gates Foundation pays its
top folks. Standing pays and standing requires pretension if not outright
lies and gibberish.

Us Washingtonians know the charade. Politics is a reality, and we do not
readily fall for any claims of moral superiority as in your "*I interpret
this to be a rejection by Nikhil of everything going on to advance stove
development - which is already pitifully low by any sort of moral standard.*"


Ah, so glad to fall short of your moral standard!! :-)

Let me go out and make a more incendiary claim -- the TC 285 exercise has
been reduced to a pretense of morality when it confused "stove development"
with "health benefits" at the level of an individual user. What utter - um,
nonsense. WHO and ISO - not private entities but apparently controlled by
some as well as the US government - have no business using IAQ "Guidelines"
to develop ISO fiat about Emission Rate Targets or "Standards".

The entire line of arguments upwards (Global Burden of Disease is
attributable to HAP) and downwards (that individual burden of disease can
be measurably reduced by setting solid fuel emission rate standards, akin
to the NSPS in US) is erroneous. It is a house of cards that needs to be
knocked down in order to really advance stove science to the users' wants.

I have said it before and need to repeat it -- get your head out of the
firebox and EPA/BAMG "box models" and look at the cooks and their
environments. Peer-reviewed literature has its uses, so read it diligently.

ND on RWL 18 and 19: You need to have pizza and beer with me at Comet Ping
Pong, my friend. (I see you too confuse UNF with the UN as in what you
allege to be my "*put-down of the UN.*" And why shouldn't I even engage in
a put-down of the UN if and when I feel like it?)

To repeat, it is my duty as a devout Hindu to slay sacred cows.

As C S Lewis quotes Luther in The Screwtape Letters:   "The best way to
drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer
and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn."

ND on RWL 20: Is "stove programs" Ron Larson's exclusive turf that you
can get away with claim "*someone wanting to kill stove programs will
love to quote this list about expertise being cooked"*? Yes, SOME
stove programs should be killed. The governments of Norway and UK may
want to take notice and examine just what cakes are being marketed by
EPA and BAMG. Someone should be paid to do primary data research and
pop the balloons that have been floating around the last six years
about stove emission rates and premature mortality rates.


ND on RWL 21: "Golden pills" is mixing metaphors - instead of "silver
bullet", I chose golden, because the Gold Standard Foundation is involved
in this racket. And I chose pills because bullets are not good metaphor for
medical interventions. WHO and EPA seem to be abusing -- the sense I got
from the webinar in September with Michael Johnson and Ajay Pillarisetti --
the GBD methods ("killing by assumptions") to create an impression that a
"better stove" is just a pill. Guess what - child pneumonia may be easier
to prevent by improving the whole "home environment", not just a stove, and
may be easier to treat with a vaccine (under way in India). But no, you
seem to yearn for Golden Pills - stoves certified by the Gold Standard.
(Tell you what - I will buy you a Golden Pils. The Gold Standard is a pile
of lead rust.)

ND on RWL 22: I suggest you read definition 3 for pornography
<https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pornography> at
Merriam-Webster's website. Yes, I stand by my accusation that Gates funding
is poverty porn. I never said "stove research" is poverty porn, just much
of the purported "heath research" by NIH/CDC. This Malawi study was not
funded by Gates, and it didn't need any funding to conclude what should
have been obvious to anybody with eyes and brains:

"The lack of effect on pneumonia might be explained by exposure to other
sources of air pollution, including rubbish burning and tobacco smoke, that
could have overwhelmed any potential effects of the cookstoves. An
important implication of these observations is that tackling any individual
source of air pollution exposure in isolation is unlikely to be effective
for improving health; an integrated approach to achieving clean air that
tackles rubbish disposal, tobacco smoking, and other exposures, as well as
robust cleaner cooking solutions (eg, cleaner stoves and fuels) that
achieve a high rate of acceptance is probably needed to deliver health
benefits."

But more is at stake than "highly qualified" researchers reaching "highly
qualified" findings. The whole idea that fuel emission rates -- in this
case by two varieties of Philips stoves -- should have had "an effect"
measurable and measured by this study's research protocol is lunatic.

ND on RWL 23 and 24: If you had bothered to read, it is the Malawi study
that my e-mail was about. I quoted from it at the beginning of the post. It
is evident that you don't bother to read anything. A highly moral stance
for this list?

ND on RWL 25: Whoever gave you the idea that GBD is "medically based"? Read
my post on this list on 11 September 2016 -  *The story of GBD 2010: a
“super-human” effort, "a way of life"; still getting away with murder?* IHME
researchers honestly admit their tricks. Read Lancet instead of just
throwing citations. GBD is one way of cooking up numbers; to my knowledge,
no government in the world gives a damn about GBD and Comparative Risk
Assessment. And it is not obvious anybody should. Why don't you take up a
campaign to reduce substance abuse in the US? Or is Colorado marijuana
pollution getting to you?

ND on RWL 26: Hey, good that you remember 1978. I was asleep the whole
year. The cult you want to think of is not of Jim Jones' but of Sts.
Hillary and Tim - Glib Arrogant Cookstovers Cult.

ND on RWL 27 and 28: For once, you guessed right and admit that you "have
not been sufficiently following this GACC work". (If not, why were you in
such a rush to calumniate me?)  Please send me a summary if you have
finished it; it's over a month now, past holidays.

In conclusion, let me say I smell a skunk in the South Lawn and Imperial
Hotel fine-wine-dine-and-shine parties. I don't charge conspiracy when mere
stupidity suffices to explain the outcomes. (A very critical Washington
lesson from some Congressional hearing back in early 1970s - "Do not rush
to ascribe to conspiracy that which mere stupidity would suffice to
explain." Sometimes dumbness is disguised as deceit.)

If I had a monopoly over money, I would cut out WHO from the ISO process
and junk the ERTs, Tiers, as they exist until the testing protocols are
reformed to include actual cooking. If you had a monopoly over stove
science, I would give you the money and five years to make a class of solid
fuel stoves (biomass and coal, cooking and heating, in or outside the home)
that can reach all users in the following ten years. (I have a feeling this
is also what GACC and WHO/IWA folks want, just that they have put an
airplane before a horse. You could use all GACC partners, research on
marketing and business models, to sell your stoves.) I am afraid the train
has left the station, you have too little time to stake a case that modern
solid fuel stoves - informed by all "stove science" that you know - will be
found "usable" by masses soon enough. Otherwise this "better biomass
stoves" enterprise is doomed. (I think coal will survive.)

-----------
See you back some time, otherwise call or write to me.

Nikhil
---------
(US +1) 202-568-5831 <(202)%20568-5831>


On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 9:25 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> List and Nikhil, Crispin
>
> This is the promised expansion of my last-night's message telling Nikhil
> that I object strongly to his weird anti-stove development comments.  Since
> mine he has put 6 more into the system, generally including my name;  I
> will add a little below on those as well.
>
> To summarize what I am objecting to in Nikhil’s behavior on this list
> (including much more than the following message):
>
> a.  Essentially no messages that advance stove science (the word science
> being used here intentionally)
> b.  Negative comments about especially GACC (Global Alliance for Clean
> Cookstoves) and especially its CEO (Radha Muthiah)- about which/whom I have
> seen no evidence he knows much.
> c.  Negative comments on Hillary Clinton, whose work on stoves has been
> wonderful - and I never saw mentioned during the campaign
> d.  Nonsense statements about DALY’s - a standard method in the health
> community for addressing health impacts of all kinds - and especially
> stoves  (My last message listed all the acronyms in this world - with
> cites.)
>
>  If Nikhil continues in this anti-stove-development-vein, I ask the stove
> list moderators to put his comments into a review status.  This would
> thereby limit his remarks to those that help, rather than harm, stove
> development.   The last thing we need on this list is someone driving
> people away from this list and from supporting stove development.
>
> On Dec 7, 2016, at 11:06 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> List,  cc Nikhil, Crispin et al
>
> I consider this to be the single least professional document I have yet
> seen on this list.  This is to tell anyone agreeing with Nikhil that his
> rants and ill will towards (apparently) everyone working on stoves do not
> coincide with anyone else’s thinking that I know in this business.  He has
> some strange mental aberration that is beyond my comprehension.
>
> It is too late at night to go into detail - but I will do so tomorrow - on
> at least the 28 emphasized words/topics below.  I repeat - I am embarrassed
> that anyone would treat honest stove research in the way he has done below
> (and many earlier times).  There must be some explanation for his
> ill-well.  Anyone know?
>
> I repeat - anyone who believes all this animosity - please wait until you
> hear the other side.
>
> Ron
>
> On Dec 7, 2016, at 1:27 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ah, another report on "scientific" advance. I see scientists *regressing*
>
> *[RWL1:  insulting to many on this list.  Petty.*
>
> to *infantilism*.
>
> *[RWL2:  Ditto*
>
> Andrew asks, "Is it because there are other vectors of the  illnesses
> linked to poverty?" (Do Smoke-free Stoves Really Save Lives
> <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38160671>, BBC News 7 December 2016)
>
> Possibly, as Roger has pointed out.
>
> Any more details depend on the *price*.
>
> *[RWL3:  Unclear meaning.  I am afraid Nikhil is saying that consultants
> will need to be paid more to give good advice, which does not apply to the
> stove contractors I know.  Thanks for Andrew and Samson taking
> this seriously.*
>
> I have been surprised so often over the last 15-20 years, I stopped being
> surprised.
>
> For one, the Malawi study "was expected to show children are less likely
> to die of pneumonia if they live in a home where food is cooked on a
> smoke-free stove rather than an open fire."
>
> Ah, *forget*
>
> *[RWL4:  Here, telling Andrew (see last message below for the lead into
> this story) there is no need to try to understand the reports in the BBC
> piece)*
>
> about "other vectors". The very premise is *presumptuous beyond common
> sens*e.
>
> *[RWL5:  (d,f).   This is an insult to everyone working on stove health
> issues (neither Andrew or I are).  The next two questions are meant to
> insult a whole slew of medical experts -who know perfectly well how to
> answer such questions.*
>
> What does "live in a home" mean, and what does "less likely to die of
> pneumonia" mean? Where do these *pundits*
>
> *[RWL6:   The “pundits” he is referring to are 15 physicians in the UK,
> with Dr. Kevin Mortimer (see below) as the lead author.  See the whole
> article at:  *http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6
> 736(16)32507-7/fulltext*   The article answers the next question
> perfectly well.*
>
> get their baseline data and the methods of testing likelihoods for
> different samples?
>
> Kevin Mortimer says,""Exposure to household air pollution is a problem of
> poverty. If you're not poor, you're not exposed."
>
> What *nonsense*.
>
> *[RWL7:  “Nonsense” is obviously intended as an insult to 15
> professionals, specializing in tropical medicine, with a specialty in
> stoves and health.  I guess with a hope to stope their further work.*
>
> Emissions from uncontrolled combustion of fuels occur within "homes" as
> well as other cooking places, and they spread "outdoors" where exposures
> can occur to the poor as well as non-poor.
>
> They
> <http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32507-7/fulltext>
> set out with an *untenable, ill-defined*
>
> *[RWL8:  The hypothesis seemed fine to me - and this list has had several
> responses on why the hypothesis failed.  I can think of a lot more - but
> that is not pertinent in this message.  The point is Nikhil has
> not explained why “untenable” and "ill-defined”*
>
> hypothesis and put 8500+ Malawian households under the researchers’ eyes
> (no data on researchers' eyes or *brains*)
>
> *[RWL9:   Only intended to impugn the (highly qualified) authors  (the
> Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals). *
>
> - "10 543 children from 8470 households contributed 15 991 child-years of
> follow-up data to the intention-to-treat analysis." They "found no
> evidence".
>
> It is *amazing*
>
> *[RWL10:   The reporter Gill probably had no choice in these photos or
> their placement.  Both photos do a good job of letting the BBCs readers
> (and viewers?) know that cooking in developing countries is much different
> from cooking in the UK.  I take this to me a slam at a reporter who did a
> good job in getting a Lancet story out to people who would otherwise never
> see it.  I wish the Denver Post did something similar once in a while.
>  (Beeb means BBC)*
>
> that the first photo in the Beeb story is of a closed smokey kitchen with
> open fire, and the other is of a one-pot "improved stove" OUTSIDE the home.
> Maybe Gill wanted to* allege*
>
> *[RWL11:  All parts of this sentence seem intended to be derogatory;
>  Reporter Gill is smart enough to know that indoor and outdoor cooking have
> very different health impacts.  I think someone else is doing the alleging.*
>
> that even outdoor cooking with improved stove does not yield any
> measurable health benefits.
>
> ********
>
> BBC wonders *"Where does this leave a huge UN-backed project.. **"*.
>
> Depends on what the meaning of "backed" is and what the meaning of UN is.
> Yes, some unrecognized *Uber Nuts*
>
> *[RWL12:  Nikhil:  I consider this the worst putdown of all that I am
> commenting on in this message.  Apparently you think this is great humor,
> but I perceive it as harmful in the extreme.  If “Nuts” was an attempt at
> humor, it fails at the sixth grade level.*
>
> - otherwise known as *GACC*
>
> *[RWL13:  For all who don’t know GACC, please go to *
> http://cleancookstoves.org/about/our-team/  * to see photos of 29
> staffers.  I have met briefly only 5 or 6 and only expect one to know me
> now.  My interactions with all (mostly at ETHOS meetings) has left me
> impressed.  They do not deserve to be coupled with the word “NUTS”.  At
> this GACC web site, there is plenty of other information on what they are
> doing.*
>
> , a project with no legal personhood - have been feeding “Annual Reports",
> quarterly reports, CEO's golden words to the *gullible*
>
> *[RWL14:    I fail to see any importance to the idea
> of “legal personhood".   The CEO in question is GACC’S Radha Muthiah.   For
> anyone on this list to call any media “gullible” seems intended to hurt all
> that this list stands for.  We need the press badly; from my perspective
> they are doing a fine job under very difficult circumstances (I am
> objecting to the views on the press of one recent Presidential candidate).
> For anyone from the press reading this,   I suspect **Nikhil is NOT
> speaking **for most on this list.*
>
> media, but that amounts to* glib propaganda*, nothing else.
>
> *[RWL15:  Notice that NO examples of glibness and propaganda are given.
> Some examples?   I interpret this to be a rejection by Nikhil of everything
> going on to advance stove development - which is already pitifully low by
> any sort of moral standard.*
>
>  Now that Antonio Guterres is at the helm of the United Nations, he should
> formally resign from this* gang o
> <http://cleancookstoves.org/about/our-team/>f Hillary lovers*
>
> *[RWL16:  I can only interpret this as his strong political statement more
> on Hillary than GACC - which has no place on this list.  I do not recall
> any prior reference to politics ever on this list - which is intended to be
> helpful to every part of the world, not the US.  I am extremely proud of
> the fact than the new head of the UN has been associated with GACC - and so
> hope he stays with GACC, to whatever extent is possible.*
>
> who have *nothing better*
>
> *[RWL17:  I suggest Nikhil is NOT an expert on what GACC is about.   I
> attended their meeting in Cambodia and found it to be exceptionally well
> run.  Since the funding now is hugely larger than a few years ago, we
> should all be very thankful that the UN Foundation (mostly funded by Ted
> Turner - with projects only with national governments) is the home of
> GACC.  The UN Foundation has excellent status around the world -
> which explains a lot of their fund-raising success.*
>
> to do than host fine-wine-and-dine opportunities. Now that the South Lawn
> is beyond reach after 44 days, I would be *happy*
>
> *[RWL18:  GACC is a lot more than what Nikhil (again) disparages.
> Googling “Comet Ping Pong”  led me to a D.C. story about a man with a gun
> who believed a preposterous fake story about cutting up children (by
> Hillary).  I consider it unbelievable that Nikhil would being this onto our
> list and talk about “premature deaths”.  This story is obscene.*
>
> to serve them wood-fired pizzas at Comet Ping Pong, and measure their
> pneumonias and premature deaths. Beer for $10 a pint.
>
> Wait a minute! BBC Action <http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/about/funding> is
> a NEW IMPLEMENTER PARTNER
> <http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/11-27-2016-new-partners-november-2016.html>
> of GACC and is funded by the same *delusional*
>
> *RWL19:  This “delusional” seems as harmful for me as the above put-down
> of the UN.  I hope all the donors to GACC hear loudly that most of the
> stove community greatly appreciates their caring about stove improvement
> even if a few on this list disagree.  I know little about BBC Action,  but
> their site says:  **“**BBC* *Media **Action is the BBC’s international
> development charity”.  In my mind they chose in GACC one of the best
> possible ways to encourage international development.   Again,  I hope all
> understand how seriously Nikhil is hurting our international development
> efforts on this list.*
>
> donors who fund GACC (DfID, Govt of Norway), some more (US State Dept, EU)
> including some private companies (BMB Mott McDonald, DAI) who do
> “consulting" (which can mean expertise *cooked* to recipe).
>
> *[RWL20:  I suppose Nikhil thinks this “cooking” double entendre is
> clever;  someone wanting to kill stove programs will love to quote this
> list about expertise being cooked.  (And for what reason is it "cooked”?)*
>
> And, of course, by those *saviors*
>
> *[RWL21:  another word chosen only to diminish our efforts.  I have no
> idea what “Golden Pills” refers to.*
>
> of the world looking for Golden Pills and fund the NIH/CDC kind of poverty
> *porn* by, ahem, "research", viz. Bill and Melinda Gateses.
>
> *[RWL22:  Anyone agree that Nikhil’s view that stove research is “porn”?
> I did a search on the GACC site for “Gates” and came up with 15 entries.
> Anyone able to identify those that are porn (or “ahem” research)?*
>
> DfID also funded this “study”, *passed off*
>
>
> *[RWL23:  I have no idea what “this study” refers to, but clearly Nikhil
> found it was not “hard science”.  Nikhil:  specifically which “study”
> was “passed off”?*
>
> as “hard science" to those *gullible*
>
> *[RWL24:   I need to know which report DfID supported,  before agreeing
> that I am among the gullible.  I suspect this indicates that Nikhil doesn’t
> know that DfID supported about 30 studies.*
>
> enough. Once you *imbibe*
>
> *[RWL25:   Another loaded word - whose only purpose I can see is to
> further demean the work of GACC.  The term “GBD brew” refers to a major
> medically-based 2015 update study whose site I gave earlier today:  *
> http://thelancet.com/gbd .
>
> the GBD brew and get all *mushy-headed*, “hard science" is incarnated in
> BBC stories.
>
> *[RWL26:  I take this to be another way to discredit everything related to
> stoves and science.  Nikhil is probably trying to be clever in referring to
> a tragic cult situation in 1978 - see *https://en.wikipedia.org/w
> iki/Jim_Jones .  *If not this- what is he talking about?  And why?*
>
> *Blind* pundits *parroting* *platitudes* to the public.
>
> *[RWL27,28:   I guess the blind are those at GACC, or maybe it is anyone,
> like myself, who applaud the GACC “platitudes”.   I guess “parroting” is
> meant to say that there is nothing new and original.   I have not been
> sufficiently following this GACC work - and so I will try to do some
> summarizing ASAP.*
>
> * Apologies for being long-winded.  The subject matter seemed worthy of
> the time involved.  Basically I am mad.*
>
> Ron
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170118/cdb02f77/attachment.html>