[Stoves] Yet another review paper (2014): Perspectives in Household Air Pollution Research: Who Will Benefit from Interventions

Thu Jan 2 14:36:11 CST 2020

List and ccs:

	I think we have reached the end of needed dialog.  I am basing everything in this thread on a hopeful connection between char-making stoves and the climate and restoration communities that is (below) being denied by Nikhil.  

	Two comments below.

> On Jan 2, 2020, at 11:16 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ron: 
> 
> You: "My query to this list is - how can we best use the fact that char-making stoves can make money for their users?  Nikhil has failed to address that issue.  Is mine a non-serious question?  One has to believe that climate change is real to get into this topic in a serious way."
> 
> Your question IS serious. The only positive comment I have made thus far - beginning three years ago - is that I see commercial char ovens and commercial char stoves as promising , if the land and the feedstock are available at low cost. 
> 
> I differ on whether taking climate change seriously requires taking the business potential of char making and CDR seriously. There are many CDR options, mostly on paper. I suggest making a business case for one location, one feedstock, and one set of customers. Climate change is too big a problem. 
	[RWL:  You may be right.  We do indeed differ on whether trying to solve a small part of the climate problem via char-making stoves is worth anyone's effort.  I see stoves and char-making as an avenue into much larger char-making with most of the char going into the soil - never to be used for cooking.  Lesser value, but still valuable, to put the char into asphalt and similar.  Many cash-related problems affecting the 50% of the world cooking with biomass might have some relief if the money available for climate restoration were directed to the community being served by this list.  My just-sent response to Gordon and Bill is in that spirit - so I know there are some believers.  

	I emphasize I am in a fact-finding, not solution recommending, mode here.	

	Any others see a possible connection between charcoal-making (and money-making) stoves and the excess atmospheric carbon world (which is looking for ways to spend money)?

	one more below.
> 
> I think you misinterpreted my last sentence. Just because char using stoves can make demonstrable contribution to reduction in air pollution exposures does not mean I am ruling out char making stoves. Air quality is a local property that is also affected by wind patterns over a wider range. Much of the current, conventional char making in the developing world is polluting. Together, clean char making and clean char use can, in theory, be significant contributors to alleviating SOME air pollution. The history of successful interventions in reducing air pollution from charcoal making kilns or charcoal using kilns is not very promising, however. 
> 
> If I were to take that you have jumped off the bandwagon for predictable health benefits - it'll take impossibly hard and costly research - and are thinking of nothing but charcoal-making stoves, I hope these pointers encourage more discussion: 
> 
> a. It takes a revolutionary breakthrough for technological and behavioral changes to take place at global scale. Wireless telephony and grid-connected PV (maybe wind) are good examples. Char-making is not a revolutionary breadkthrough. 
> b. It also takes an institutional pipeline for knowledge, finance, and skilled labor for such breakthroughs to occur. I see no such prospect on the horizon. (Remember the dreams shattered and left by the wayside over the last 30 years - NREL's Village Power that led to the Global Village Energy Partnership whose results to date are dubious. Same thing with GACC. Same with SE4All. Or UN SDG apparatus, the Paris Accord; the list of failures is long.) LPG and electricity succeed because these pipelines exist. Remember Kirk Smith's a challenge to biomass stoves community  <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53856e1ee4b00c6f1fc1f602/t/590b78d49de4bb6e66c97095/1493924052510/ESD+editorial+on+biomas.pdf>(2017) and the 2015 piece in Caravan (India) magazine Up in Smoke. <https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/smoke-india-perfect-cookstove>
> c. GACC has driven a stake through the credibility of the "biomass stove community". UNF taking intellectual command over WHO and then to energy access and cooking health SDG is a fraud and a travesty. Whatever credibility was built up for investments in biomass stoves - by which I mean not donor-driven, donor-controlled (EnDev and other GTZ/GIZ projects or some regional and national projects) but those where national governments had taken their own or World Bank money to make new boimass stoves a success - was destroyed by GACC. I think the World Bank will once again try to use bilateral donor grants for biomass cooking, but I hope they use the ISO guidelines and "voluntary performance standards" sparingly and after serious critical analysis. (And avoid the aDALY fraud.) 
> 
> I wish I could be more encouraging. All I can say is that I admire your enthusiasm..Past failures are no guarantee of future failures.   Let's have a business case that does not require anything of government policy changes or government financing. 
> 
> I took a quick look at the paper Haight et al. (2019)  Estimating the Present Value ofCarbon Sequestration in U.S. Forests,2015–2050, for Evaluating FederalClimate Change Mitigation Policies <https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4B8AFEEA2102B1F54561B05586E5FA8A/S1068280519000200a.pdf/div-class-title-estimating-the-present-value-of-carbon-sequestration-in-u-s-forests-2015-2050-for-evaluating-federal-climate-change-mitigation-policies-div.pdf>. As a matter of general preference, I don't give a hoot about computations of "social cost of carbon", and I am also allergic to references to Bill Nordhaus and Michael Greenstone. (The only climate economist I was hoping to get some more insight from killed himself a few months ago.) 
> 
> But this paper offers hope - if there is POLITICAL traction, then come 2021, a Pete Buttigieg  may champion carbon storage in soils. See https://peteforamerica.com/policies/climate/ <https://peteforamerica.com/policies/climate/> Amy Klobuchar is supporting current and new biofuels.  https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/homegrown-energy-environment-natural-resources <https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/homegrown-energy-environment-natural-resources>
> 
> I won't hold my breath for char revolution or for it to make any difference in climate vulnerabilities of anybody anywhere. Poor people don't have the luxury to worry about climate emergency. 
	[RWL:  I think you give them too little credit.  I think we can close your part of this thread - I have understood you don’t concur with the thrust.

Ron

> 
> Nikhil
> 
> PS: Yes, Peel's connection to Kirk Smith is relevant but this paper is also significant for all its references (some of which I have known over the years). The main point, for those who are still stuck in the world of senseless modeling, Michael Johnson's - I think he himself would readily concede that - or Ajay Pillarisetti - who too might - this Clark-Peel paper as quoted is a reminder that there is no there there in the EPA/WHO, Gates/IHME cockamamie. (I am joining EPA and WHO, and Gates Foundation and IHME because of the bureaucratic and financial linkages; I have no inside knowledge, but an audit of contracts would help.) 
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831
> Skype: nikhildesai888
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 11:21 AM Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
> List with ccs
> 
> 	The pertinence here seems to be that Peel once worked with Smith.  Not at all pertinent to my initial query - on using the fact that char-making (not char using as Nikhil uses in his final paragraph). Is different from all other stove types. And is almost not discussed at all in stove—health publications.  And clearly char-making stoves are the healthiest of all starting with biomass.
> 
> 	There is a surprising link to my carbon-climate world towards the end of this paper - recommending this paper:  https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4B8AFEEA2102B1F54561B05586E5FA8A/S1068280519000200a.pdf/div-class-title-estimating-the-present-value-of-carbon-sequestration-in-u-s-forests-2015-2050-for-evaluating-federal-climate-change-mitigation-policies-div.pdf <https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4B8AFEEA2102B1F54561B05586E5FA8A/S1068280519000200a.pdf/div-class-title-estimating-the-present-value-of-carbon-sequestration-in-u-s-forests-2015-2050-for-evaluating-federal-climate-change-mitigation-policies-div.pdf>.  It has no connection to char-making cookstoves - which I think will be limited to the half of the world now cooking with biomass.  And who could use a little more income (and a lot less expense).
> 
> 	Again,  My query to this list is - how can we best use the fact that char-making stoves can make money for their users?  Nikhil has failed to address that issue.  Is mine a non-serious question?  One has to believe that climate change is real to get into this topic in a serious way.
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
>> On Jan 2, 2020, at 8:07 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com <mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Ron: 
>> 
>> Your references led to more references; here  Clark, M.L. & Peel, J.L. Perspectives in Household Air Pollution Research: Who Will Benefit from Interventions? <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0#citeas>  Curr Envir Health Rpt (2014) 1: 250. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0 <https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0>  
>> 
>> "Several investigators have hypothesized that those individuals who are more susceptible to the adverse effects of air pollution exposure may also be the groups that benefit most from efforts to reduce air pollution levels (e.g., traffic reduction plans, industrial facility closings, indoor air filter interventions) [47 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0#CR47>, 48 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0#CR48>], yet this question has largely been ignored in the cookstove field. Valid assessments of the true exposure-response relationships among various subpopulations are necessary to inform a more accurate estimate of the global burden of disease attributed to cookstove smoke, an identified research gap needed to convince governments and policy makers to enact interventions [49 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0#CR49>]. Evidence regarding who benefits from improved air quality is limited and inconsistent. It is not known whether larger predicted benefits among certain subpopulations are due to differences in greater relative improvements associated with air pollution reductions (i.e., different exposure-response functions experienced by the subgroups) or differences in absolute improvements because of poorer baseline health status, which may be independent of air pollution [47 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40572-014-0021-0#CR47>]. " `(Emphasis added).
>> 
>> Let me put this in simple but contentious terms: as of 2014 at least, NOBODY KNEW. Kirk Smith's robust physicist approach to setting the boundaries of HAP as solid fuel origin emissions meant that, in practical terms, solid fuels were demonized and LPG/gas/electricity promised as "life saving" (aDALY terms, at least). 
>> 
>> Mind you, one of the co-authors here (J. Peel) also co-wrote with Kirk Smith the paper "Mind the gap" (2010), in my view opening up a radical (but mistaken) path to concocting the Integrated Exposure Response, whereby Kirk Smith ignored all the chemical diversity, took PM2. equitoxicity as an article of faith, and his colleagues manufactured extremely limited concentration estimates from some 600 Indian households during winters (as I remember it; I forget the village locations and months). 
>> 
>> What happened in 2014 is well-known: a set of hasty "literature reviews" for the WHO, and Burnett et al. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24518036> cooking up the IER, IHME the HAP DALYs. Then EPA contractors essentially dictating to WHO the terms of HCFC Guidelines <https://www.who.int/airpollution/guidelines/household-fuel-combustion/IAQ_HHFC_guidelines.pdf> and thereby the ISO TC-285 methods and tier levels. 
>> 
>> What Clark and Peel observed in 2014 is still valid, more so since GACC has morphed into CCA, paid marketers of LPG, and Kirk Smith is still looking to market aDALY consultancies if Goldman Sachs and Gold Standard have their way. 
>> 
>> For biomass stovers, though, the question remains: how much really needs to be known to make a meaningful change? Thee authors say "The ability to know what to expect from cookstove interventions (i.e., to accurately describe the presence of the subgroup response, as simplified in Figure 1, as being a meaningful shift in health improvement) is crucial to reducing scientific uncertainty and to encourage policy makers to enact change. "
>> 
>> What has happened is that "scientific uncertainty" and ignorance are suppressed and a new religion of LPG has taken shape in CCA. 
>> 
>> My view is, quantification of "health effects" is academic sideshow. The real challenge is to develop biomass stove designs for commercial and household markets that can make demonstrable contributions to reduction in air pollution exposures. I submit household wood cookstoves can do  that, charcoal stoves do that, and commercial charcoal stoves could do that faster. But then, that's just a hunch. CCA has got the money to spread the gas. 
>> 
>> N
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Nikhil Desai
>> (US +1) 202 568 5831
>> Skype: nikhildesai888
>> 
>>  
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