[Stoves] climate change and health

[Nikhil Desai]

Dear Ron:

Thank you for another laugh.  Not every GHG molecule is a weapon of mass
destruction. Remember Kirk Smith - "If one is going to put carbon in the
atmosphere anyway, CO2 is the least harmful form from both health and
climate points of view."

Or remember Nadine Unger who modeled GHG emissions by sector and declared
power generation to have practically zero radiative forcing.

Here is the deal -- use coal for power generation, emit some SO2 with a
high chimney, and use the electricity for transport. Don't grudge LPG for
the poor until the rich start paying their dues.

Fossil fuels are our inheritance, and if we are to leave to future
generations a healthy, prosperous world, it is incumbent upon us to use our
inheritance wisely, meaning reducing PICs and increasing CO2 emissions per
energy service. Combined with reducing energy service requirements (end-use
efficiency), we will leave a better world behind.

Just please read models, not press releases, least of all the Guardian
babble. Yes, models are like sausages and legislation, be they models of
GBD or GMST. Discount, discount, discount - for time and uncertainty, and
expert biases. There is too much fat and sugar, and too little protein in
modeled cakes. Lancet publishes all sorts of things; news of model findings
do not constitute analysis and policy judgments.

I happen to have delved into such models of climate change and health five
years ago, reading a paper by Tony McMichael (RIP) in a version of
Comparative Risk Assessment. He had modeled climate change and health
impacts by WHO regions for 2020 (and 2050 perhaps, I don't remember). As I
often do, I shredded that model to pieces for its rather ludicrous
assumptions about health care in Africa.

It is because attribution is such a primitive science - be it for GBD or
GMST or "health" - that even as one IPCC review (AR4, I think) had tried to
give some credibility to pieces like McMichael's, the following review
(AR5, I think) eliminated any such claims. I suggest you read the Working
Group 3 full report of IPCC AR4 and AR5. I can then look into this Lancet
Countdown <http://www.lancetcountdown.org/the-report/>.

>From the look of its three "key conclusions" and five "indicators), it
seems to me its conclusions are no different from what I wrote five years
ago in a paper for the African Development Bank - on resilience,
co-benefits, finance and economics, and of course, broad issues in public
health and education, in my words "human capital" (includes safety
network). I  may have been the first to put such conclusions on human
capital and climate change policy before African governments. (Yes, I used
Jim Jetter's pictures of "advanced biomass stoves" in my full report. I may
even have written I had high hopes from GACC at the time. It is the
advocates "clean cookstoves" - GACC or ETHOS - who have failed the poor.
Just read Kirk Smith's two epiphanies and lay out a plan for "clean enough"
solutions for the poor in the next ten years.)

Climate change is just another name for the insecurities the poor have
suffered for centuries. The poor suffer the climate whether or not it is
changing, whether or not the change is due to Colorado emissions or Kerala
emissions, and whether or not fossil CO2 emissions are cut. There is a huge
and growing backlog of the poor's climate vulnerabilities as much as from
inadequate investments in human capital. Those who want to deny
modernization of local environments - from land and water use patterns to
cleaner air via fossil fuels (including coal power and LPG cooking, but
without HAPIT crookedness) - for the poor are enemies of poor people. I am
not in that camp.

Climate change is by definition (IPCC) made of natural and anthropogenic
influences over multiple decades. To date, IPCC hasnt't yet told us the
precise extent of climate change and how much of it is attributable
precisely to natural versus anthropogenic determinants.

Ideolgues have been pretending knowledge and generating hysteria in the
name of "carbon budgets" producing just precisely 2C, 4C or 6C multidecadal
average increase by 2100. Climate policy is inherently a political
activity, and any calls to stop using fossil fuels are cacophony of
ideolgues.

Still, here in DC, we are going to legislate a carbon tax, my favorite
instrument. (DC doesn't have a fossil fuel power plant other possibly than
a couple of CHP units.) When do you propose CO should start a tax on its
fossil fuel production and use?

Please don't be offended. I am trying to have a conversation rather than
just one-way propaganda from the Guardian.

Nikhil



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


On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 9:29 AM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> List:
>
>    see yesterday article:  https://www.theguardian.com/
> environment/2017/oct/30/climate-change-already-
> damaging-health-of-millions-globally-report-finds
>
> which is based on Lancet report at http://www.lancetcountdown.
> org/the-report/
>
>
> This re whether we need to NOT use fossil fuels for cooking.
>
>
> Ron
>
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