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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Stovers, <br>
<br>
Because of a processing delay, many of you might not have read
Cecil Cook's excellent comments about fixing the difficulties of
the WBT and related problems. I recommend that you read it
(below).<br>
<br>
Cecil makes many good points and makes a suggestion for
resolution. But I want to stimulate the discussion with an
alternative consideration.<br>
<br>
1. The "collective body" of persons / experts / enthusiasts that
is discussing the revisions of the WBT procedures seems to be hung
up with distinct camps or points of view. In that regard, I agree
with Cecil that some new approach is needed. And soon.<br>
<br>
2. Cecil proposes that an independent review be conducted and (I
might be incorrect) that the reviewer would essentially make the
final decision (based on substantial inputs by all who are
interested).<br>
<br>
3. An alternative (just a suggestion) would be that the
independent (and neutral) reviewer would be in charge of the
leading the discussions, intending to get people to agree. That
is, that none of the current participants in the discussions be
placed in charge of leading the efforts for resolution, keeping
the discussions objective, impersonal, and scientific. Somewhat
of an arbitrator or moderator, but not trying for a compromise.
Trying for the best science.<br>
<br>
The reason for suggesting the moderator/arbitrator is in hopes
that within our Stove Community we could reach some semblance of
agreement, instead of letting an outside reviewer make the final
decision. If the split continues after the moderation effort,
the decision making could then be turned over to the reviewer who
would then essentially act as judge and jury.<br>
<br>
I think that use of an independent moderator/arbitrator would be
faster and cost much less money. <br>
<br>
I remain flexible about how the solution could be accomplished.
But I and many others want some serious progress about this soon,
not waiting on and on and on as meeting yield very little
progress.<br>
<br>
Paul<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:psanders@ilstu.edu">psanders@ilstu.edu</a>
Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.drtlud.com">www.drtlud.com</a></pre>
On 2/16/2015 3:18 PM, Cecil Cook wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CA+1hLhYfNd=9ncqzeYJUNRhGHP2sWr8USq9nhtUao0D3_6fr_g@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Dear
Stovers,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Not sure
what has caused time to skip beat here. I just wrote and
lost a very clever response to the present thread of
discussion on the multiple
short comings of the WBT which remarked the following: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(1.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Science
- even
stove science - grows by fits and starts;</span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(2.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">science
learns more
from recognizing that <b>big mistakes</b> have
inadvertently been made
that it does from research that confirms well established
scientific paradigms (see
Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery for the
usefulness of scientific
failure)</span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
</span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(3.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">in
science - even
the science of biomass stoves - progress comes from the</span><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">retransmission
of falsehood (falsification) by deductive chains of logic
from the failed predictions back to the falsification of
theories, metrics, and
models because they generated mistaken predictions about
stove performance (or
such matters as planetary motion, climate warming and
weirding, the effect of GMO
's on human and animal health, race as a construct and its
effect on IQ, and
the Lamarkian notion that acquired characteristics can be
inherited, etc.)</span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(4.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">we are
fortunate
that people like Ianto Evans, Larry Winiarski, Dean Still,
Peter Scott,
Nordica, Sam, and probably many others I do not know took
the bull by the horns
and bravely originated a preliminary set of principles for
designing improved
biomass burning stoves and also cobbled together a series of
provisional efficiency
and emission tests. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">These
were the original Aprovecho stove pioneers who also founded
the
Rocket Stove movement which mercifully improved upon the
earlier Lorena stove experiment
that constructed thousands of high mass clay/sand ‘masonry’
stoves which were
soon discovered to be much less efficient than a well
operated 3 stone fire.
This group of appropriate technology oriented, back to the
land hippies gradually
became more technical and began to refine and apply the VITA
WBT to measure and
compare the efficiency of different kinds of simple biomass
stoves. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">They put
together a set of specifications and principles for
designing,
building and optimizing the Rocket Stove which became the
prototype in the mind
of the Aprovecho movement for all improved cookstoves
anywhere in the world. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Finally,
the Aprovecho-niks and communards were joined by university
based engineers, physicists, chemists, and atmospheric
scientists from UC
Berkeley, and a wide spectrum of university based scientists
and private sector
professionals associated with the annual Ethos conference. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">This
professional and hands on US based network has been busy
over the
past 15 years attempting to clearly specify metrics that
measure the
technological performance of biomass stoves. It has also
pioneered the design
and instrumentation of stove testing centers and the
specification of observational
protocols that correctly ‘opertionalize’ these metrics.
From the
beginning, the main purpose was to discover simple tests
that empirically
assess the efficiency and emission performance of improved
biomass stoves and also
to make quantitative comparisons between improved stoves. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">The
rejection or lukewarm reception of many – perhaps most -
improved
stoves in many countries of the developing world over the
years has forced
European, American, Indian, African, Latin American, and
Chinese designers and
makers of improved stoves to gradually expand their horizons
to investigate the
roles played by all the other major factors, interests, and
constituencies which
significantly influence over the acceptance or rejection of
new biomass stoves
including: (i.) funding agents like USAID, the World Bank,
and GIZ, (ii.) standard
setting agencies like EPA and the WHO, (iii.) large scale
industrial and village
scale craft manufacturers, (iv.) the controllers of access
to gathered or
commercialized fuels from the nearby environments, and (v.)
the socio-economic,
cultural, and human factors involved in the
institutionalization of one or more dominant stove
technologies and
products in a particular market segment; these human factors
are ultimately the
most important determinants of user acceptance or rejection
of improved stoves.
The acceptance or rejection depends on the perceptions of
the utility of a new
stove within the household economy where the stove has
multiple functions to
perform: cooking the food eaten by the family, heating its
home, earning income
by providing heat to power home industry, purifying water,
drying crops, providing
light, and creating a social and spiritual center around
which family life
revolves. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Speaking
as a science challenged social anthropologist I think that
several things need to be acknowledged about the
Aprovecho/Berkeley/Ethos (ABE)
alliance. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(1.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">It has
done a good
job of promoting the Rocket Stove design around the world. </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(2.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">On the
down side, its
efforts to demystify the design of improved stoves and
empower village and
craft fabricators of simple low cost stoves, the ABE
Alliance appears to have
conflated improved stoves in general with the basic Rocket
Stove. </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(3.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">This
conflation of
Rocket stoves with biomass stoves in general has
unfortunately led to emission
and efficiency metrics and testing procedures which perhaps
unintentionally advantage
the Rocket Stove and disadvantage all other types of stoves
(e.g., the specification
of 1 inch square pieces of oven dried spruce or pine as the
test fuel that must
be expertly fed into any stove being tested).
The reliance on metrics and test protocols which favour some
stoves and
disadvantage other stoves does not lead to stable or valid
comparisons of the efficiency
and emission performances of different types of stoves or
even the same kind of
stoves. </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(4.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">The
leadership role
assumed by the Aprovecho/Berkeley/Ethos Alliance in the US
State Dept funded and
EPA supported Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and the
GACC’s adoption of
the WBT metrics, protocols and instrumentation has
complicated an already
complex predicament. Because personal and institutional
reputations are at risk,
it is becoming increasingly difficult to radically change
the WBT metrics, test
protocols, and instruments without creating winners and
losers. The GACC and
big political players are in danger of exposure for
prematurely funding big
implementation programs without first settling the science
of small biomass
stove testing. </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(5.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Here is
my proposal
for salvaging the present ugly situation of stove scientists
behaving badly in
public: let all the stove scientists and stove testers who
think they know how
to test the efficiency and emissions of small cooking and
heating stoves agree
on an independent standard developing and setting
organization like TUV
Rheinland-USA (</span><span
style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,102,33);background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.tuv.com/en/usa/home.jsp">www.<b>tuv</b>.com/en/usa/home.jsp</a>)
</span><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size:12pt">or some other respected science
testing establishment in the world and ask them to review
all the different metrics,
testing protocols, equipment/instrumentation on offer.
The GACC probably has the funds needed to pay
for such a comprehensive review. It can invite all the
stove scientists and
testers with skin in the game to form themselves into a
small advisory body
whose job is to ensure that no interested party or parties
captures or
dominates the review of existing test protocols and
metrics. That means the proposed
advisory group will have to consult openly about the rules
that will govern the
consultative, </span><span style="font-size:16px">re-conciliatory</span><span
style="font-size:12pt"> and global culture and
science creating process
they will go through together. </span></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 39.6pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(6.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">I
understand that
the ISO process and the IWA’s are attempting to do what I am
proposing we ask
TUV Rheinland or another comparable science testing
institution to do on behalf
of the presently dysfunctional small stove community around
the planet. Here is
my contention: the ISO was and is premature because the
small stove community
is too divided by conflicting research styles and programs
prioritizing the
stove operator, family health, employment creation,
environmental stability,
energy sustainability, and decentralization and appropriate
technology. The suggested involvement of TUV Rheinland USA
is to help a grumpy, preoccupied, and stressed out
international stove
community to speed up its integration around second
generation metrics, stove
testing protocols, lab procedures, and possibly even field
tests. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">My
interest here is
to allow all stove scientists and hands-on stove innovators
to give their
testimony about: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(i.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'">
</span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">what
specific aspects of stove performance need to be observed,
reduced
to metrics, quantified and compared, </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(ii.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'">
</span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">what
testing protocols, methodologies, equipment, and </span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 54pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(iii.)<span
style="font-stretch:normal;font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times
New Roman'">
</span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">what
field observations are required to predict both stove
performance
and probable stove use in particular target communities? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 18pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">In that
way the Independent third party agency reviewing the WBT,
the
testimony of the partisans of particular approaches to
testing and specific metrics,
will get the benefit of all the years of good work done by
stove scientists,
manufacturers, trainers, vendors, lab testers, back yard
innovators, etc.
around the world. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">If we
simply continue the low intensity stove testing wars fought
at the
World Bank, USAID, EPA, UC Berkeley, several national labs,
the GACC, and in
most of the different countries where stove testing is under
development we
will continue to develop backwards. It is not fair to our
partners in the
developing world because we are sewing confusion and
conflict among our
partisans and our enemies. </span><span
style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt">My
goodness such conduct is not professional, even in post
modern North America and
Europe where nowadays it’s difficult to find a flesh and
blood human being to talk to in
the midst of cyber anarchy and inward facing crowds.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">And let
us not forget dear Rumi, a Sufi poet who wrote in the 13<sup>th</sup>
century: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
class=""><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">O</span></span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">ut
beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing,</span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black"><br>
<span
style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">there
is a field.
I'll meet you there.</span><br>
<br>
<span
style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">When
the soul lies
down in that grass,</span><br>
<span
style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">the
world is too
full to talk about.</span><br>
<span
style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Ideas,
language,
even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Ask
Rumi to help us find our way out of this mess
we are creating. And do not forget what Walt Kelly’s
philosophical opossum - Pogo - who lived in the Okefenokee
swamp in my part of south Georgia as known to say when
politics got out of hand:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">“We
have met the enemy and he is us” or even
better: “we are defeated by insurmountable opportunities”. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">In
search and service,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">CECook
</span><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span
style="font-size:12pt"> </span><br>
</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
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