[Stoves] aDALYs (Re: Ron, Crispin)

[Nikhil Desai]

Ron:

This is a long-delayed response to your questions over a month ago (below).
Yesterday's Lancet items made this timely again. I will respond separately
on aDALYs, HAPIT incentives, ignorance, etc. later. As I said before, I do
not allege "crookedness". I had written I "hesitate to ascribe to
crookedness that which mere incentives or ignorance would suffice to
explain." I agree with Crispin's "The bandwagon we should get on is the
killing of the WBT, and the tradeable aDALY‎."

*[RWL1:  So I deduce you are firmly opposed to the WBT.  Your reason?*

ND 1. You know I am less bothered about protocols than about metrics.
Without a service standard and an objective, metrics beg the question
"Why?" before "How?" My primary complaint with WBT since 1983 has been that
water boiling is not a reasonable proxy for cooking, which varies across
time and space, and that it is applied in a "fuel-free", "cook-free"
manner. Now, if stacking is allowed in donor/CDM projects, and a usable
stove is shown to produce some reliable, replicable metrics by WBT, I would
like to see the proof. (Crispin has a basic problem with concepts and
manipulation of the computations by WBT owners, but I leave that aside.)

I have a further objection that the IWA and WHO only use "efficiency"
metric (with or without char credit, which I have no view on) and have
thrown in PM2/5 hourly average emission rate, which has no prior history of
any relevance whatsoever, just a theoretical imposition by WHO based on --
well, nothing.

If ISO was some personal venture -- which it increasingly looks like,
despite international participation -- whose judgments did not matter and
users merrily went about buying stoves that they didn't trust and didn't
use, or used in combination with their traditional stoves, I won't bother
with WBT. But ISO is an international venture, ARC is promising Tier
Certificates using WBT, no other metrics than efficiency and CO, PM2.5
emission rates (and safety) are considered, and there is a pretense that
this is somehow a legally certified activity.

This pretense I find hard to stomach. It may well be that users select
stoves no matter what the protocol and what the efficiency and emission
ratings, just that they happen to be blessed by ARC using WBT. I won't
mind. I would like to see one instance where a WBT-legitimized stove has
produced the fuel cost reductions and hourly average PM2.5 emission rates
in actual use for some 250,000 users (0.1% of the potential market).
Without such evidence, all this arguing in support of WBT is metaphysical,
theological, academic. Has served a select group of experts, not the users.


"*[RWL2:  I’ve spent an hour trying to find this webinar.  Could you give
a link?"*

ND 2: I might have done so earlier, or you may have found it. Just in case,
the webinar recording is available at https://youtu.be/4-PTiawvfd8. There
was also a Q&A document after the Webinar. I will post from that later with
my comments.


* "I am not understanding your “just….crookedness”."*

  See above.

"b) A chapter on HAPIT by Pillarisetti, Mehta and Smith (2015 or 2016),
> available on Kirk Smith’s website.
>
*[RWL:  It is at:  *http://ehsdiv.sph.berkeley.ed
u/krsmith/publications/2016/HAPIT%20chapter.pdf .  Looks well done to me.
Which of your “this claim” (crookedness, incentives, or ignorance”) are you
ascribing for these three authors?"

ND 3:  Incentives or ignorance.

*[RWL:  Your “you” applies to me - so I will make an initial response.  I
find Kirk’s work reasonable and await reasons for not thinking it good.
They rely on DALYs for much of the methodology - and I support that use
fully, in large part because I trust Kirk.  I look forward to hearing why
I should not.  *

> "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.
>
* For others - this is in part describing a rationale for adding chimneys
in Guatemala.* "

 ND 4: You or anybody else, including Kirk Smith, only needs to read Kirk
Smith.  HAPIT is based on untenable assumptions and non-existent data. He,
Sumi and Ajay go around marketing it betting that nobody would question
PM2.5 IERs and accept that just as IHME/WHO murder by assumptions,  Smith,
Mehta and Pilarisetti can save by assumptions. These are different cohorts
and lumping cross-section data on smoking, anytime anywhere for any length
of dosage with dubious concentration estimates applied to all men, women
and children who died in 2012 with a lifetime of exposures and disease
burden is indeed a miracle that is groupthink. My post last night about the
most recent Lancet online papers ought to have made clear that there are
others who question the data and methods of GBD.

Nikhil
On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Nikhil et al:
>
>
>
> On Aug 30, 2017, at 4:16 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
> *[RWL1:  So I deduce you are firmly opposed to the WBT.  Your reason?*
> I am not understanding the term “tradeable aDALY” -  I don’t see how this
> is to be accomplished.  See next on marketing - which seems the same.
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> *[RWL2:  I’ve spent an hour trying to find this webinar.  Could you give
> a link?*
>
>
> * I am not understanding your “just….crookedness”.*
>
>
> 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.
>
> *[RWL:  I After a half-hour,  I couldn’t find anything at Gold Standard.
> Cite?*
>
> b) A chapter on HAPIT by Pillarisetti, Mehta and Smith (2015 or 2016),
> available on Kirk Smith’s website.
>
> *[RWL:  It is at:  *http://ehsdiv.sph.berkeley.ed
> u/krsmith/publications/2016/HAPIT%20chapter.pdf .  Looks well done to me.
> Which of your “this claim” (crookedness, incentives, or ignorance”) are
> you ascribing for these three authors?
>
> 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.
>
>
> *[RWL:  Your “you” applies to me - so I will make an initial response.  I
> find Kirk’s work reasonable and await reasons for not thinking it good.
> They rely on DALYs for much of the methodology - and I support that use
> fully, in large part because I trust Kirk.  I look forward to hearing why
> I should not.  *
> * For others - this is in part describing a rationale for adding chimneys
> in Guatemala.*
>
> * Re your next sentence - please consider this an independent contact to
> hear more.*
>
> * apologies for not having time to proof read above.*
>
>
> 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
>>
>>
>
>
>
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