<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/plain;"><style> body { font-family: "Calibri","Slate Pro","sans-serif"; color:#262626 }</style> </head> <body data-blackberry-caret-color="#00a8df" style=""><div>http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/26/protect-the-poor-from-climate-change-policies/</div><div><br></div><div>Dear Friends </div><div><br name="BB10" caretmarkerset="INVALID" class="markedForCaretMarkerRemoval"></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">Domestic stoves are receiving more and more attention with the contrast between the lives of the rich energy consuming nations and the poor living in a cloud of smoke getting more and more attention. Article are appearing with increasing frequency in Nature, Science and heath publications. The piece above directly challenges the story line that the poor should, in service to the greater good of mankind, continue to suffer in backwardness in order to save us all from thermageddon. The plight of stove users and breathers of smoke is starting to emerge as a PR talking point. </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">Taking the standpoint of Samer Abdelnour which asks overarching questions about links and common associations, one can ask if improved stoves such as the one selected for the headline are actually substitutes for real energy democracy, with complex questions of access being 'technolgised' and reduced to providing a compensating $35 stove. Poor countries are now being actively defunded for new energy supplies as stove programmes are ramped up. Is this the trade off? Breathe less smoke is the dark - thanks. </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">Personally I don't think so - it is an accidental correlation. It falls to the stove promoting community to ensure that no backlash against omnibus climate control policies negatively impact the progress we have created in this sector. </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">If the wonky science and even anti-science that pervades the climate alarmist narrative were to be detected in stove testing and promoting community the inevitable backlash will take down the stove programmes (including the CDM funding). </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">The moment is therefore opportune to sweep the stage clean at the Guatemala ISO meeting and ditch the albatross that has weighed down the improved stove sector - tests with questionable math, poorly defined terms and even some invalid metrics. We are capable of doing much better and now is the time to prove it. </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">If the stove community cannot even abide by the basic requirements to have our test methods peer reviewed, our formula changes tracked, our definitions standardised, our metrics validated, we become a vulnerable pawn in much greater conflicts about how the poor should be raised from they current conditions, including energy poverty. I invite you all to read my lecture presented on the 26th at Clarkson University entitled "Blowing smoke - the curious case of the mangled metric" which explores the conceptual error of applying a valid metric to a thermodynamic situation different from the one for which it was devised - and the negative consequences of doing so. I will make it available in a couple of days. </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">In short, if the real scientists among us do not start taking a stand in favour of the use of valid stove performance evaluation methods, and soon, the whole improved stove edifice is going up in flames. There are opportunists and careerists on every side. We must NOT be caught with our mathematical drawers around our ankles. At the moment we stand exposed. </font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">Sincerely</font></div><div><font face="Calibri, Slate Pro, sans-serif">Crispin </font></div></body></html>