manapua_man

If you're talking about that BioLite stove, I got one with the grill attachment as a means of grilling on my apartment balcony without being painfully obvious about it. (Not supposed to do that here...)

It's alright as a stove, and kinda crappy as a charger. I wouldn't use it for touring or hiking, but I could see keeping it in the back of a car or truck. The main problem is that it's too bulky for what it is, and the heat shroud on it is a little flimsy too.

noglider 

You guys picked on the wrong guy to have a fight with. I looked Stuart up and read a couple of the abstracts of his papers. If you believe in clean, renewable energy, don't pick a fight with someone who has done more to advance those causes than you have. You're nice guys, and I wouldn't say this if I thought you were stupid or normally rude. That's why I'm saying you just put your feet in your mouths. Take the knowledge and wisdom you can get from him. It will be better for all of us. And he doesn't need me to defend him. He's doing a fine job at that. I'm saying this for your sake, not his.

You didn't come to this discussion to find an expert, but you did anyway. Stuart works at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. They have a page of their major accomplishments.

noglider 

There is a thread here, perhaps in the Touring section, about using a dynamo hub for charging during the day, assuming you don't use the dynamo for lighting in the day. If you are going to spend a lot of time on a bike and away from a power outlet, the solutions discussed can serve the purpose well at reasonable cost. I haven't taken any long tours in a long time, and carrying a cache battery is good enough for me. If I camp out this summer, I'll probably bring two or three of those batteries. I already use a dynamo hub for lighting, and it's great.

Happy Feet

Really just shows what goes wrong in threads like this. Often times people with specialized knowledge can be some of the worst communicators because they talk at people instead of with them and are more interested projecting and protecting image than knowledge.


So first, no one picked a fight with Stuart. Stuart picked a fight by trying to correct some things other people were saying in a basic conversation. Like this by KD in post #74:

to which Stuart said:

and then went on a binomial nomenclature binge.

Now why Stuart felt he should tell someone that the tree they were referring to wasn't ok is beyond me but he did. And the thing is.. KD was absolutely correct within the context he was discussing. A Cottonwood is a fast growing tree. Even scientists refer to Eastern and Western Cottonwoods as such.. as well as Poplars and others.. in general discussion. If it's ok for them to do so I would imagine it's ok for people on a bicycling forum to do so as well without being corrected. I said I saw Cottonwood trees in my neck of the woods too but apparently, even though I have a stand of them growing 100 meters from my house, I don't know what I see either. In general conversations people don't refer to specific cultivars but that didn't stop Stuart from trying to show we were wrong by emphasizing jargon over substance.

In the last round he says:

Which is a not so clever way of trying to twist the conversation. Pretty sure KD and I were not discussing research done on hybridized poplars in our posts but that fits his narrative much better so why not say we were.

The problem being that he took his experience and tried to project it onto our experience and tell us what we were discussing was wrong as a rhetorical device. He could have chosen to talk about his experience instead but he didn't. This also happens in steel vs the world threads when he tries to tell everyone else why they chose to buy a steel frame (because we all mistakenly believe it can be repaired by the village smithy) and then goes on to correct everybody with his vastly superior knowledge of metallurgy.

The other point of contention was whether a wood burning stove was carbon neutral. That started with Will saying in post #50:

To which I said:

That was my point; which I expanded on by saying many times that while insignificant, to claim a process as carbon neutral you had to balance the equation by sequestering the same of CO2 from the atmosphere again.

What followed was more "you're wrong" lecturing until, 10,000 words later, Stuart basically stated the exact position I had made:

And so it goes...

Now he is arguing that sequester is wrong but capture is right.. even though he's used the term himself repeatedly but I guess it's only right if he uses it because he's the expert.. or something. I dunno. I gave up.

As to putting ones foot in ones mouth. I've been pretty consistent in my positions throughout this thread and still am while Stuart seems to have danced 360 degrees in some cases from arguing to supporting them or rebranding them in his own words to claim ownership. Humm... Maybe if that energy was really put into educating and talking with people instead of beating them over the head as to how wrong they were a lot more of it would get across. A real red flag for most people would be, if one has that much time, education and experience in a subject but can't engage in a simple online forum discussion with laymen without trying to alienate and make them feel inferior to one's position as expert, there's a problem. Not with the knowledge base, but with communication and motivation.

noglider 

Well OK, if you wanted to exchange information and learn things, you could have, but I sense that you just want to have a fight and declare yourself the winner. Arguing about nomenclature is a good way to fight, but I don't know where it gets you.

Happy Feet

?

I just wanted to talk about some basic ideas without being corrected about using the wrong "terms" ie. Cottonwood vs specific hybrid cultivars, carbon neutral vs well.. carbon neutral and now sequester vs capture.

When Will said he thought the stove was truly carbon neutral, and I said not really because it created some CO2 and needed a corresponding action to balance the equation and KD said in that case he would plant a tree... that was a good example of people communicating and confirming an understanding of concepts. We actually got all that right.

I don't need to be a "winner", just don't like being told I'm wrong by taking my words out of the context they are being used or saying I didn't complicate it enough.

noglider 

Sure, being told you're wrong is unpleasant. Nit picking is annoying, too.

djb

and on a different but somewhat connected to the topic note, reading some of this jogged a memory from my Latin American trip this winter--in the morning when heading out of a town, I would often notice this cloud cover looking stuff, and would worry about if it would be a rainy morning. Then I would figure it was some low clouds that would burn off as the sun rose--I eventually realized that when we would climb out of a town and be able to see the town from higher up, that it appeared that it was haze from all the little wood fires of folks boiling water and heating up breakfast, as you could see that it would always be just over the towns up to a certain height.

I'm sure this is the same all over the world where wood burning stoves are used.

no more thoughts than that, just jogged a memory.

Happy Feet

saddlesores

but you already are a winner!

you're out on your bike, like, touring and stuff.
leaving behind the car and the ac and the electronics
and the space heater and all your various appliances.

so what if you burn a few twigs or a half ounce of alcohol!
insignificant compared to the overall reduction in your
carbon footprint.

KD5NRH

FWIW, my review on the Lixada version of the stove:
https://texasfromtheothersaddle.word...ss-wood-stove/