Author Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Path_between_sugar_canes_(5216462193).jpg
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Does global warming cause kidney disease? According to a study published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the root cause of a mystery illness which has killed 10s of thousands of sugar cane workers in Central America might be chronic dehydration, as a result of frequent hard, manual labour in extreme heat.
According to the study;
… Despite limited resources, we documented widespread decreased kidney function in coastal communities related to years of work on coastal sugarcane/cotton plantations. The high prevalence of eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73 m2 in the coastal communities, 18% of men aged 20-60 years, indicates the severity of the epidemic in a region where there is little to offer to patients and where CKD often progresses to ESRD and death. It is noteworthy that decreased eGFR also is related to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease at CKD stages 3-4 is higher than that for reaching ESRD.38, 39 This study from El Salvador, as well as the recent Nicaraguan studies,23, 24, 25 provides important clues for etiologic studies, particularly heat stress.
It is urgent to assess the causes of this severe public health problem with properly designed etiologic and clinical research. A thorough medical workup including kidney biopsies and histopathologic examinations from a small group of affected individuals in rather early stages of CKD is needed to confirm the interstitial nature of the disease and provide clues with regard to pathogenesis. Etiologic research would use random samples from a proper study base and repeated measurements of all pertinent exposures with emphasis on heat exposure, environmental and water pollutants (particularly pesticide residues and heavy metals), and amount of water intake during work and rest.
Precautionary preventive actions must be implemented already at this stage, providing sufficient water and rest for workers in hot environments. There is a threat that global warming will dramatically increase populations exposed to hard work in hot climates. If heat stress is a causal factor for CKD, this disease will be an added health risk related to climate change.
Read more: http://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386(11)01785-9/fulltext
One of my first jobs was working in a poorly ventilated rubber and plastic moulding factory in Australia. During summertime, under the blazing Australian sun, the temperature outside frequently reached 104F (40c). Inside the factory the temperature often exceeded 120F (50c). Due to the poor ventilation, the air inside the factory was humid, and was thick with a haze of poisonous chemicals – sulphates, organo-chlorides, ketones, a thoroughly nasty cocktail of toxic substances. Undoubtably anyone working in that environment sustained at least some organ damage, including most likely to our kidneys – we all absolutely stank of chemicals when the end of shift bell rang.
Why didn’t we suffer high mortality rates, like the workers in this study?
For starters, we were properly hydrated – the one thing the company did right was to ensure we were receiving the correct amount of well balanced rehydration electrolytes, rather than whatever random concoction people working in third world cane fields receive. On the hottest days, someone would circulate with drinks every few minutes.
The other factor, is we were using machines. The work was boring, and physical, but it wasn’t hugely strenuous. Nothing like the level of physical exertion required to work cane fields, without the benefits of modern technology.
If physical work in extreme heat is causing the mystery kidney disease, the simplest solution is surely to help workers in poor countries buy modern equipment, such as a few fossil fuel powered tractors and harvesters, to reduce the need for extreme manual exertion in harsh conditions.
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Globul warming causes repetitive and predictable articles.
Drink water. DUHHHHH . . . even animals can figure that one out.
Actually, it’s not that simple.
The phrase “well balanced rehydration electrolytes” really means something here. Sweat is not just water, it contains salt, among other things. If you sweat heavily for a long time and drink only water, your body gets salt-depleted. This causes crippling pain, a phenomenon known as “stoker’s cramp”.
Ultimately, it can be fatal.
It is not that simple I am afraid. The reality is that sugar cane farmers working under the conditions prevalent in central America are unlikely to have access to the quantities of clean water and salt replacements needed. One of the main factors that reduced serious disease rates in the Commonwealth armies in Africa and Asia during WW2 was down to the efforts of the Army Medical Corps in ensuring that adequate water and salt tablets were provided and that sanitary regulations were enforced. The result was a far lower level of disease than was prevalent in the Axis forces.
The real answer to these disease issues is a plentiful supply of clean water and wholesome food. As a retired British medical officer for a local authority once said in a lecture they are two of the main factors that raised life expectancy in the developed word. The third was cheap soap.
It is going well beyond what we saw in the run up to Copenhagen.
Just how desperate have they become?
As time goes on, their predictive models become more and more farcical compared to the new raw data. They’ve gotten to the “grasping at straws” point of their argument.
More than a month to go. Expect more of the shame.
add “languages” to theendless list…
17 Oct: Tribune Pakistan: Shabbir Mir: Endangered: ‘Climate change threatening languages’
We have all heard of climate change impacting topographies and ecosystems, especially in mountainous regions. However, languages and cultures in particular areas have not been spared by the effects of this phenomenon.
A study conducted by Zafar Shakir of Karakoram International University (KIU) reveals Shina language is a casualty of climate change.
Belonging to the Dardic tribe, the origin of the language dates back to the arrival of Aryans into Shinaki area (areas along the Hindukush and Karakoram) circa 1,500 to 2,000 BCE. Words from other languages have encroached into particular regions of the Shinaki area, thereby categorising it within the threatened languages.
A lecturer at the Department of Modern Languages at KIU, Shakir carried out a study in September with 20 Shina-speaking participants displaced by floods over the past year…
According to Shakir, “There is a direct and indirect impact of climate change on our material culture, which includes our clothing, agricultural norms and housing.” The lecturer added, “However, there is also a direct and indirect impact of climate change on our non-material culture, which revolves around languages.”…
The KIU faculty member said the impact of climate change on the target group forced them to code switching (switching from one language to the next in one conversation), inter- as well as intra-sentential switching, and blending and borrowing of words from other languages…
http://tribune.com.pk/story/974655/endangered-climate-change-threatening-languages/
Halfway around the world, in the Amazon jungle, is an area where nearly all members of several tribes are fluent in two or more tribal languages. This area’s extreme multi-lingualism has been studied for many years; here are two published studies, some 40 years apart, that give a serious account of factors affecting the Vaupes linguistic system. The notion that a change of a couple of degrees in average temperature would have an effect on indigenous languages that wouldn’t be swamped by all the other factors…. I’m afraid this doesn’t pass the sniff test.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1967.69.6.02a00030/pdf
http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/cilla2/Stenzel_CILLA2_vaupes.pdf
pat
Thanks.
You quote
– I think from the Tribune Pakistan: –
“Words from other languages have encroached into particular regions of the Shinaki area, thereby categorising it within the threatened languages.”
I fear for English, which has had ‘words from other languages’ encroach and assimilate into it’s lexicon.
Well
Some – biro, karaoke, pogrom, bungalow, bard, corgi, coffee, igloo, selfie, cul-de-sac, handphone, sauna, goulash, gulag, laptop – in no particular order – are assimilated.
There are many others.
For English, this is probably no real problem – the vocabulary is huge – maybe a couple of million words – and English will – crucially – absorb any word that works . . . .
For Shina language, it may have been too late, some years, decades, or centuries ago.
Relevance to CAGW – decidedly unproven, I suggest.
Auto
If you go back 3 or 4 hundred years, most of the words now in the English language, weren’t in it back then.
Between introduction of foreign words and linguistic drift, the language has changed dramatically. If you take a modern English speaker and dropped them into Elizabethan England, the locals would assume that he was speaking a foreign tongue, it would be that indecipherable to them.
I helped install a first installation of some business equipment back in the 90’s in Tokyo. It was weird listening to the technicians talk. Fairly frequently highly accented but clearly distinguishable English worlds would pop up. Hard disk, floppy disk, mouse, and other technical terms.
It never made any sense to me, Japanese already has perfectly serviceable words for everyone of those English words, so why not do a direct translation? Never did figure it out. English usually adopts new words when they words either describe a new concept, or carry a nuance that no existing English word currently covers.
Much to the concern of the French, English predominates as the lingua franca of the world precisely because of its huge vocabulary (largest of any language) and because of its complex unwieldy grammar. This is not too surprising if one believes the Sapir-Warf Hypothesis, “Language determines the boundary of thought.”
On the other hand, the French word-police enforce strict guidelines as to how foreign words are imported into their language, which ironically has seen a diminution in its influence as the original lingua franca of many world governments.
-i.e. OPENESS, as we would all like to see in the study of our climate, is better than CONTROLING CLOSED-MINDEDNESS!
“the French word-police enforce strict guidelines ”
Tell us more. What is this “police” and what can is do?
Back in the late 60s, I was working in Quebec (as a mine superintendent). The shift bosses reported in a diary like log book, and they changed languages (French-English-and back again) all the time Sometimes several times in one sentence.
I read these log books with English and school boy French (learned in Australia). All it did was improve my French.
Global warming? In northern Quebec? You would have to be joking.
MarkW wrote
“If you go back 3 or 4 hundred years, most of the words now in the English language, weren’t in it back then.
Between introduction of foreign words and linguistic drift, the language has changed dramatically. If you take a modern English speaker and dropped them into Elizabethan England, the locals would assume that he was speaking a foreign tongue, it would be that indecipherable to them.”
To paraphrase a well known writer of the Elizabethan era ‘the gentleman doth protest too much’. The fact is that around the world people read books written in Elizabethan English and watch films and plays where actors speak the same language.
Yes some of the words used would puzzle an Elizabethan but for the most part conversation would be no more difficult than between and Englishman and an American. In fact English at the time was rapidly changing. At a time when even educated men used only around 7000 words Shakespeare alone added around 2000. The worst that would happen is somebody would ask that new word’s meaning.
Below is a brief sample of the new words that became commonly used at that time.
Accused Addiction Amazement Arouse Assassinate Blushing Champion Circumstantial Compromise Courtship Countless Critic Dawn Epileptic Elbow Excitement Exposure Frugal Generous Gossip Hint Impartial Invulnerable Jaded Label Lonely Luggage Majestic Negotiate Obscene Premeditated Puke Scuffle Torture Tranquil Varied and Worthless.
simple-touriste wrote:
‘“the French word-police enforce strict guidelines ”
Tell us more. What is this “police” and what can is do?’
The French word-police is the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologisme, which seeks to enrich the French language by finding French alternatives for Anglicism’s.
So there is no police and no enforcement.
We have witness (témoin) for web cookie. Nobody uses that.
Anyone who is bi or multilingual knows that when talking with someone who speaks the same languages, you tend to switch back and forth in the same conversation. It’s been that way at least since 1971, when I found myself doing it; possibly even longer… 😉
Let bottom line has encroached into the french language. They have to make up words, like to describe a jumbo jet, big fat grub. All due to global warming, no doubt. What’s next? 4G lte? No doubt in Japan and Korea, all due to global warming, english words are working their way in, konglish. We have to stop global warming to stop this outrage! Wonder why they have to go off to some remote place to study changes in languages? Grants? Sarc
All of which begs the question of why is continued mixing of languages necessarily bad? If climate change allows us to communicate in a common language, I’m all for it.
I am quite sure that Mobile and landline phones had nothing to do with it, nor did the advent of radio, television and the Internet…. Then again I might be wrong, how about a couple of million dollars and… wait make it 3 millions and I’ll do the study………..
We sceptics need a slogan. Can someone post a translation of
“Sceptics of the world unite – throw off THEIR chains”
In Esperanto
Using google translate:
“Skeptikuloj de la mondo unuigi – deĵeti ILIAJN ligilojn”
But there has been no “global warming” for over 18 years as documented at this site so often by Lord Monckton. On top of that, “global warming” was always supposed to mainly happen away from the tropics. It was supposed to warm the poles so that the “average temperature” would increase. Given these facts on has to say, “what sinking Central American warming?”
On the other hand, being dehydrated while doing extreme physical labor has been known to be dangerous for a long time. Do these “scientists” not know that?
“being dehydrated while doing extreme physical labor has been known to be dangerous for a long time. Do these “scientists” not know that?”
How would mediocre minds that are incapable of the simplest analytical logic and with an inbred and narcotic desire for an easy dole on the AGW hook “know that”?
Wouldn’t surprise me if a fairly large majority of these scientists are unfamiliar with extreme physical labor, with or without dehydration.
+1
Global warming has damaged the brains of climate scientists. What further evidence do you need?
I’d blame grant greed before global warming for climate science brain damage.
Or maybe they’re using cheap as hell tablets to “sterilize” the water being pumped for the workers to drink.
It is far more likely that poor or dangerous work conditions combined with insufficient vitamin intake is causing the damage.
Bingoid! Or they may be drinking the local popskull rum.
Traditionally, the sugarcane workers of Australia and New Guinea at least, were pretty big on rum as an additive to fluid intake. I’d be looking at that first as a possible cause for organ damage.
poor pay, low standard and not much of it food, add a shitload of chemical absorption vie dermal route AND top it off with dodgy water, heat and hard labour.
and the chem factors a biggie as the sprayings increased hugely over time.
then the matter of Fake and who knows what substitution IN the chem?
these same people in the same areas for generations climate adapted didnt get this problem before and they had less mech assistance back then
so its NOT just climate and water.
“Global Warming”, “Climate Change”, “Extreme Weather”, or whatever their boogeyman-du-jour is, are all nothing but convenient scapegoats and an excuse to not addressing actual problems, the primary one being poverty. Ironically though, the very thing the Warmista want to do to “solve climate change”, which is to make energy both less affordable and less available lowers living standards, both creating more as well as exacerbating poverty.
Bingo! +1
Thank you Bruce, saved me some typing. The other thing is that there actually has to be global warming of a significant value for this to be blamed on their “climate change”.
I sometimes wonder why we need weather stations and satellites to measure the weather. The number of available proxies that you could use instead grows by the day.
Why not just measure the size of sheep, or jellyfish, or incidence of rare kidney disease and convert it straight to temperature?
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I wonder the same thing. It seems proxies are so accurate I can’t imagine why we need thermometers.
For decades there have been people cutting sugar cane in Brazil, under similar conditions. Why has the disease not been found there?
In fact the conditions used to be worse. Up until about 2000 there was frequent burning of sugar cane prior to harvesting to strip off the leaves. The workers used to end up as black as coal miners.
Not forgetting workers in arid environments around the world.
Arid environments are much more likely to cause dehydration than working in high humidity environments.
Kidney’s are damaged by a myriad of chemicals including over the counter pain/inflammation pills.
Only a proper study performed under controlled conditions can validate this. Doubtless that the alarmist crowd want to run through the streets screaming precautionary woes, but one sweaty swamp does not make their case.
You know what reduces hard manual labor? Cheap electricity from coal power plants and machines that run on fossil fuels.
Then the pessimists will tally the numbers killed by accidents and exposure to exhausts, to try and convince the world to revert back to manual labor and “natural” power sources.
Only this time around, we can only burn wood on Wednesdays when the air quality is ‘green’.
What chemicals are they using to grow the sugarcane, or to purify the water for drinking? (are they even allowed to have sufficient water breaks?) Since there has not been “global warming” in some 18 years, these are the obvious questions. But, _people who live in the 2nd dimension cannot conceive of a 3rd_ In other words they cannot conceive of any other reason for people dying of renal failure, not even obvious ones. (And, of course we know every other problem in the world not caused by GWBush is caused by AGW.)
From this article:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/29/chronic-kidney-disease-epidemic.aspx
it appears they are heavily using Glyphosate (originally patented as an antibiotic) as well as 2,4-D and others. Both those chemicals are associated with kidney damage.
Are you saying that glyphosate (a name you capitalize for an unknown reason), was developed as an antibiotic or used as an antibiotic, then turned out to be an herbicide?
You would be wrong. Do your homework.
And Mercola? Yes you can do there but take what he says with a grain of salt (even glyphosate salt).
Are you seriously citing Mercola?!
This NPR article makes sense.
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/02/04/383628551/new-clues-to-mysterious-kidney-disease-afflicting-sugar-cane-workers
“….field workers whose primary jobs were spraying for weeds and pests (and who thus had the most contact with agricultural chemicals) had the least decline in kidney function over the course of the harvest.
The researchers also found that dehydration among workers with the most physically demanding job — cutting cane — could contribute to the illness.
Cutters who drank more of a generic energy drink while on the job had less of a drop in kidney function than co-workers who drank less of the beverage.”
Not to worry. At the rate they’re emigrating to the United States, I don’t think there will be anyone left in Central America to get kidney disease.
+100
Looks like pure speculation. Preliminary thinking before the real research has been completed. I suspect a lot of reports of this nature will begin to flow as countries line up for the “redistribution” of the Paris Pot.
Sorry but this does not fly with this white guy, using simplistic climate data from the world bank. Temperatures in El Salvador have only warmed over the entire century less than .5C. When your average annual temp is roughly 25C and you vary by .6C either direction, I am not buying that kidney failure is on the rise due to dehydration. Unless of course its dehydration from other sources. I have been to El Salvador multiple times over a decade and watched the conditions become worse and worse for poverty. While other countries in the region have shown some signs of economic growth, there is only signs of economic losses. I would bet if records were kept on alcoholism, this might be a problem. I would also guess that intake of Coke-a-cola products (universal name for this family of sugar and CO2) might be a problem also.
You read my thoughts?
Cruel working conditions for poor laborers is the problem. Freezing half of the planet to make Central America somewhat cooler is insane.
I suspect that if we cooled the planet enough so that the workers in El Salvadore no longer had to deal with extreme heat, then we would end up cooling the planet enough so that sugar cane no longer grew well in El Salvador. Eliminating their jobs altogether.
Some larger employers are now requiring workers to wear more clothing, including helmets, to adhere to international standards. This might not apply to sugarcane workers, but I have seen carpenters and electricians suffering in the tropical heat due to decisions made at large geographical and philosophical distances.
Guy,
I have also seen this as a problem.
We have suggested that folk working on deck be allowed – after a Risk Assessment – be allowed to not use safety helmets.
Management did not immediately agree.
Fine – if there is overhead work – but simple chipping and painting . . . . .
Come on.
We will try again.
Auto – with a mariner’s cap on!
Is there any evidence to suggest Central America has warmed ?
It seems more likely that the medical problems discussed are simply the result of poor labour practices.
A badly managed workforce.
The way to avoid chronic dehydration/kidney problems in extremely hot conditions is to drink more water.
Possibly with some dilute electrolyte. Not difficult. However this seems to be a surprisingly difficult concept for some people to come to grips with.
In Pakistan this year a heat wave coincided with the start of Ramadan when the faithful are not supposed to eat or drink between sunrise and sunset. Thousands died, particularly labourers. In my experience outside workers can get a dispensation that allows them to at least drink when conditions are extreme.
Unless you have the misfortune to consult a fundamentalist imam.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uk-heatwave-pakistan-death-toll-rises-as-clerics-urge-followers-to-abstain-from-ramadan-fasting-10360322.html
The global warming wording looks like a gratuitous add-on to an otherwise unremarkable piece of epidemiological research. With (cynical interpretation?) the object of securing more grant funds for their next project.
Unfortunately, with any publication using the words “climate change” or “global warming”, cynicism has to be the standard pose taken by the reader. Unlike “normal” science where the reader’s default position is that the authors were seeking some truth.
How sad that we have come to this.
And your paper gets counted as part of the 97%, which is handy too.
Independent of the content of the paper, of course.
As a high school student, I worked in a similar environment to the author’s (a textile dyeing house — less chemicals, more physical labor). It was a miserable place to work made worse by the fact my dad owned the factory. A co-worker was this big West Indian guy who loved the job — he had cut sugar cane in Jamaica and thought this was easy work.
Wow, so not only will a carbon tax fix the weather, it will fix kidney diseases as well.
Astonishing.
I suppose if you are stupid enough to believe in global warming, you are going to be stupid enough not to drink when you feel thirsty and assume others share this stupidity too!
It comes with being educated beyond one’s intelligence.
Sugar cane needs plenty of water to grow. Without water, no cane, hence no need for workers. There is cane, hence enough water. No problems relating to lack of water in either case.
It’s the same story every time: a problem somewhere, obviously caused by mankind. By pollution, and if not pollution then lack of something or too much of something else, all caused by mankind.
In the 1970-ies there was a mass dying of seals in the North Sea. Greenpeace, kneejerking: PCB poisoning, obviously. A biologist said, actually it’s a virulent version of distemper (and was pooh-pooh-ed). Then, Greenpeace again: the PCBs must have lowered the resistence of the seals, obviously. Then tests showed no particular high levels of the stuff in the dead seals (falsifying their models, also then).
Same story today with “bee colony collapse”. Greenpeace: agricultural pesticides. BAN them, and they were, affecting the livelihood of countless numbers of farmers. But biologists will tell you that the problem is caused by a viral infection carried by a parasitic mite which has infected the hives. Countries like New Zealand have not banned the pesticides and also no mite infection and, guess what, the bees are doing fine.
“Ed Zuiderwijk
October 18, 2015 at 7:24 am
But biologists will tell you that the problem is caused by a viral infection carried by a parasitic mite which has infected the hives. Countries like New Zealand have not banned the pesticides and also no mite infection and, guess what, the bees are doing fine.”
The varroa bee mite is a real problem. As far as I know, the only country that has bee colonies without any infestation is Australia. And we export bees to other countries. But consider, New Zealand has not banned 1080 poison, which pretty much destroys anything it falls on. Almost all other countries that used it, now does not.
1080 [Sodium fluoroacetate] is used in sw Western Australia as it is present in native plants consequently much of the native wildlife can tolerate it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_fluoroacetate
So 1080 can be used without inflicting much “collateral damage” in appropriate circumstances
cute….except?
Bayer admitted in their own early data that the neonic chems DID kill bees moths and Small mammals as well,
when issues arose pre bees problems they then swapped to coating seeds prior to planting
the dust from that still caused issues
its a bloody systemic! every cell in the plant inc pollen and nectar is contaminated
and it spreads IN soil and water rather well
trees a distance from farmed land tested show it in their pollen etc
and we idiots eat the seed thats got this toxic crap IN it?
same as Bt gmos , we are ingesting they DO affect gut bacteria in us as well.
ditto glyphosate.
consider this…the no till regimes were pushed and still are very heavily BY the GMO producers as ecofriendlt re soil erosion etc with a HUGE climate change saver push///
suckers for the greentard farm ideas go buy chem. sheesh
but untilled soils with dry non rotting non oxygenated non water ingress soils for much of a hot summer in Aus ..are bugger all good.
a decent burnoff -kills far more of the rusts n fungus/moulds and weed seeds and tillover with a bit of late rain to settle it down still has root material but its open to oxygen and biota for the end phase before the big heat
Plenty of water is not the same as plenty of drinkable water. If the only water available is a stagnant green pool full of parasites then you have a real problem as troops fighting in the tropical jungles of SE Asia found during WW2
Read http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/02/04/383628551/new-clues-to-mysterious-kidney-disease-afflicting-sugar-cane-workers .
It’s much more interesting than this post & comments. Someone studying both the Nicaragua and a similar problem in a rice growing area in Sri Lanka posted several comments there.
No mention whatsoever of |warming| and just a few of |global| that have nothing to do with climate. Several snarky comments toward Monsanto, but most of those are in the second URL of comments.
I’m familiar with that part of Nicaragua and the high rate of kidney disease there. I first became aware of it in 2002.
The area was extensively used for cotton farming with aerial spraying of numerous pesticides and herbicides for decades; in fact you can still see the old crop dusters falling apart at the small airport in Leon. The common belief among the locals is that various chemicals found their way into the water table and are the root cause of the problem.
In 2006, I brought several samples of water from a shallow well in one of the affected communities to the U.S. for testing. They came up clean.
Although one set of tests from one well in one community are not sufficient to prove anything, the experience was interesting and I thought of an alternative hypotheses: The people are afraid of the water and therefore don’t drink enough of it. The fear could have started with a random cluster of outbreaks which was blamed on the water, and that led to a self-perpetuating cycle of more dehydration and more kidney failure.
Whatever the cause, the kidney disease was there long before global warming was in the headlines.
Used to be – still is! – that drinking “field water” DID KILL you
But not from kidney disease. Heck, they were lucky if they lived long enough to get killed by kidney disease. And not yellow fever, cholera, pneumonia, sepsis, dengue fever, measles, syphilis, intestinal worms, leaches, mites, … etc.
From the microbes and parasites living IN the field water, the tanks, the pipes, the un-chlorinated storage pipes and pumps, the uncleaned water filters, the pots and pans and trash barrels collecting the dirty water running off of roofs and into streams and ponds.
Here is an article in the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa written in 2003 about a study being done at that time. No mention of climate change as a culprit.
http://www.laprensa.com.ni/2003/11/16/editorial/901071-sobre-la-insuficiencia-renal-crnica
And then what are the workers displaced by the machines supposed to do?
Mechanization creates problems of it’s own. It’s not a panacea. Perhaps a different attitude by the sugar Growers towards their workers might be in order.
Well most of these kinds of labor jobs are nasty ones that most, including many of the ones doing them, would like to see done away with. But unless the displaced are willing, and able, to be retrained or educated, and also perhaps move (say to an urban area, likely with sub-standard living conditions) then they will be stuck on welfare or selling illegal “stuff”. As the future world becomes even more “robotocized”, the people at the bottom with fewer skills will increase and there is owed them at least enough to live, and the funding, with justice in mind, coming from the corporations that make huge amounts off of creating the problem to begin with. However many may easily be trained to write robo-papers off the tax dole say for AGW types.
The money saved by robots will be used to buy something else. Which causes employment in the industries that make “something else” to rise.
The money saved by robots is company money that will go to buying……more and better robots or, at best, items that require an even a higher level of skill to make. The re-employment ratio is always much less than 1:1 as these are manual labor jobs and the only new jobs for the employees are other different types of manual labor, assuming that those are available/not already taken. For example, if the sugar cane pickers are replace by machinery, what are these uneducated/untrained workers to do and then where to go to do that labor. Education may be a partial answer but really not widely applicable at this level. Service industries maybe, but already much taken.
“if the sugar cane pickers are replace by machinery, what are these uneducated/untrained workers to do”
with extremely little training, they could author sciency studies about globul warming…
Your paranoia is duly noted.
Why would the plantation owners buy new robots when they just finished buying one set?
As to your claim that the re-employment ratio being less than 1:1, that’s only if you consider the direct employment in the maintenance of the robots. The vast majority of the new jobs will be in fields quite distant from both sugar cane and harvesting robots.
People have been replacing labor with automation for several hundred years, and guess what, most of us are still employed, despite the rantings of the permanently clueless.
What did your ancestors do jakee? They got higher paying jobs is what they did, and used their improved economic circumstances to provide better opportunities for their children.
So the sugar cane workers replaced by machinery will just move onto higher paying jobs…….
I’ve had a home in Nicaragua since 2002. You find a lot of people who have climbed the ladder, but the ones who have are generally 1) exceptionally bright, and 2) lucky enough to have found someone from the developed world to employ them.
Mechanized agriculture won’t occur until the cost of labor becomes greater than the cost of modern machinery. That won’t be any time soon. The typical worker we are talking about lives in a dirt floor shack, has no running water, is illiterate, is a grandparent by the time he is 35, and a successful day is one where his kids don’t go to bed hungry.
That being said, he is in many ways happier than we are, until some gringo shows up and tells him he is suffering..
BFL has the standard Marxist view of the labor markets in which there is absolutely no flexibility and people are incapable of learning new skills.
“the sleep of reason produces monsters”
What has happened to the art of medicine when having identified a problem (kidney Damage), its cause (improper rehydration) and remedy (proper rehydration), it is then suggested that to stop the problem getting worse the whole world should stop using fossil fuels.
Reason in these people isn’t asleep, it is terminally comatose.
…Global Warming blamed for mystery Kidney Disease…
Global Warming blamed for mystery psychological disease affecting Western intelligentsia…
There. Fixed that for you…
Government “fear” policies and government and other big grants cause those with limited moral principles and critical thinking skills to benefit from the “global warming” scare.
That may fix it a bit more…
I’m in my 80s and I’m still waiting for this %^%$# global warming thingie to extend my golf season. When’s it gonna land in Canada, eh?
As a fellow Canadian, I’m really starting to get worried about Global Cooling…It would be the end of Canada !!!! Vote Conservative , pump more CO2 !!!
… Trudope may get elected because he has nice hair and is an ex-drama student…
It’s snowing right now in Connecticut. Don’t count on it . . .
What? You mean you haven’t noticed that it’s possibly as much as 0.8degree warmer than 1850. on average across the globe. Everyone who I speak to about this topic seems convinced that they’ve noticed extreme changes in just the last couple of decades.
In fact – the argument that I most frequently encounter is, “well, if global warming is just hype, then how do you explain the way that the weather has changed. Because, I’ve noticed massive changes just in the last decade.”
The brainwashing of the population is almost complete.
Now they actually see what they are told to see.
Certainly here in the UK, anyway.