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CARL AZUZ: The storm has passed.
But recovery efforts are just getting
going in Louisiana and Mississippi,
and that's where we start today's show.
Thank you for watching.
My name is Carl Azuz.
When Hurricane Ida made landfall in Southern Louisiana on Sunday
and then moved inland, it ripped roofs off homes and buildings,
flooded houses and roads, flattened trees, and knocked
power lines all over the place.
Some of them reportedly wound up in the Mississippi River.
We don't know yet how many people
were killed in the storm.
But the damage in some places was catastrophic.
To give you a sense of the storm's strength,
this is a shot from a fishing camp
when the winds were calm in Port Fourchon, Louisiana.
And this is that same shot as the winds
and waves of the category four hurricane
directly hit the port.
The man who sent us this video was
not at the camp at the time.
About 40 miles northwest of Port Fourchon,
every road in a nearby parish was blocked on Sunday night.
And about 50 miles north of where Hurricane Ida made
landfall, the entire city of New Orleans
lost electricity as did hundreds of thousands of other people
throughout Louisiana and part of neighboring Mississippi.
Tens of thousands of electrical workers from across the US
have been organized to go to the region
and work on restoring the power there.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards
requested that the federal government
approve a major disaster declaration for the state.
And President Joe Biden did that.
What this means is that federal assistance and money
will be made more readily available to help
with recovery efforts.
Hospitals were damaged and are running
on backup power generators.
Rescuers are getting reports of people
who climbed into their attics and onto their roofs
as floodwaters rose around their homes.
Louisiana has been hit by category four hurricanes
in the past.
One time was last year when Hurricane Laura roared
into the community of Cameron.
And the other was in 1856 when the last island
hurricane struck.
Along with Ida, these three storms
are tied for the most powerful on record to hit the state.
Ida weakened, as hurricanes tend to do after moving over land.
Meteorologists say its big threat now is rain.
After dumping as much as 24 inches in parts of Louisiana
and Mississippi, the system is moving north through Tennessee
toward Ohio.
And it's expected to soak several states
in the region along the way.
Houma, Louisiana is about 45 miles northwest of where
Hurricane Ida made landfall.
Jason Carroll gives us a sense of the destruction
the storm left behind.
JASON CARROLL: The best way to describe it is no matter where
you look in this section of Houma,
there seems to be some form of destruction.
Take a look behind me.
That particular house just a few moments ago
had an opportunity to speak to the man
who grew up in that house.
That was a house yesterday before Ida took a wrath
and took her toll on this community.
He says he grew up here.
It's been in his house, in his family
since his great grandmother lived there.
They came out there today to salvage what they could.
It was heart-wrenching.
He used to get his hair cut right across the street there
at that barber shop.
You can see the roof is gone.
The barbershop nearly destroyed.
Right next to that, though that house still standing--
spoke to the man who lived there.
He rode out the storm, decided to stay there with his wife.
He did not want to evacuate.
He said he had ridden out storms in the past
and thought he could ride out this one.
Part of his roof is gone.
The car part is-- the carport is gone.
He said at one point it got so bad yesterday.
He got down on his knees and prayed.
CARL AZUZ: Ten-Second Trivia.
Which of these American inventors
devised a method of air conditioning in 1902?
Dave Lennox, Richard Rheem, James Trane, or Willis Carrier?
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While developing an apparatus to reduce humidity,
Willis Carrier also found it cooled the air.
So here's something kind of cool.
A new type of cooling system that
aims to copy the way the Earth naturally cools itself.
It's being used to make buildings'
air conditioning more efficient, but it does have its downsides.
For one thing, it doesn't work as well in places
without a lot of sunlight.
So rainy climates or seasons could be a problem.
Another is the price.
It ain't cheap.
The company didn't tell us how much its panels cost.
But it says they are more expensive than solar panels
which also require a lot of sunlight.
In some places with the right conditions and money,
though, the new tech is having an impact.
RACHEL CRANE: Air conditioning accounts
for 10% of all global electricity consumption.
And the demand for this type of cooling
is expected to triple by 2050, which could strain already
overworked electric grids.
ELI GOLDSTEIN: As it gets hotter, air conditioners,
refrigeration systems need more energy to run.
The more electricity we use for cooling, the more challenging
it is to operate and provide electricity reliably.
RACHEL CRANE: That's why it's the company SkyCool's mission
to make existing cooling systems run more
efficiently by taking advantage of a phenomenon that
exists in nature.
All objects give off heat in the form of
invisible infrared radiation.
As heat leaves an object, it becomes cooler--
a process known as radiative cooling.
But some objects can actually become colder
than the air surrounding it.
It's part of the reason frost forms on grass even if the air
temperature is above freezing.
But this only happens at night.
Once the sun rises, the grass eventually warms back up.
So SkyCool designed a new material
with radiative cooling properties
that work 24 hours a day.
ELI GOLDSTEIN: Radiative cooling in the sense
that we're doing it has really never been out there before.
The effect was never observed during the day.
And by enabling it with these films that we've developed,
you can now use this type of cooling even when
it's under direct sunlight.
RACHEL CRANE: Developed using modern nanotechnology,
the film has hundreds of tiny optical layers designed
to emit a specific wavelength of radiation
that maximizes cooling.
But it's also highly reflective absorbing little energy
so it stays cool even under the sun.
ELI GOLDSTEIN: That combination of properties
has never been found in nature.
RACHEL CRANE: They're incredibly reflective like
I'm-- they're almost blinding.
Are they actually physically cool to the touch?
ELI GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, exactly. So you can--
RACHEL CRANE: Can I touch them? ELI GOLDSTEIN: Of course.
Yeah.
RACHEL CRANE: --blind and burn myself at the same time?
ELI GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, and see-- RACHEL CRANE: Oh, wow--
ELI GOLDSTEIN: --compared to any other surface on the roof,
it'll be much cooler.
RACHEL CRANE: Yeah, they're much cooler than what
I would expect.
I mean, it's a hot day.
And that's cool to the touch.
ELI GOLDSTEIN: Yeah.
This is an infrared image of the panels on our roof.
You can see there's just a really stark contrast
in temperature between the surfaces that
are these radiative cooling films
and then the roof of the building.
RACHEL CRANE: And what is that temperature difference?
ELI GOLDSTEIN: It's going to be on the order
of 40 Fahrenheit it looks like.
RACHEL CRANE: And because the panels don't need
any electricity to get cold, SkyCool
says they can help a building's cooling system
operate with less power.
Here's how.
First, the panels cool down water running through pipes
embedded behind them.
Then, that cold water flows into the refrigeration
or air conditioning system to help chill refrigerant liquid.
That takes some of the workload off the condenser.
The less the condenser runs, the more money
is saved in an energy bill.
JESUS VALENZUELA: Anything that we
can do to take some of the load off of the power grids,
I'm all for it.
RACHEL CRANE: In 2019, SkyCool installed its panels
at this grocery store in Stockton, California
where it's hot and dry most of the year.
The store says it saw a notable difference.
JESUS VALENZUELA: After we had our SkyCool system installed,
our electricity company increased their rates on us.
We actually didn't see our bill go up at all.
In fact, we saw go just a little bit down.
We've saved on average about $3,000 a month.
RACHEL CRANE: SkyCool has since installed panels
at a retail store in Southern California
and a data center in Sacramento helping
to cool computer servers.
Eventually, SkyCool hopes to bring its energy-saving panels
to other commercial buildings and someday
to the roofs of homes.
ELI GOLDSTEIN: In the future, you
could imagine using this on the roofs of uninsulated buildings
in Asia or Africa and India where it's expected to be
in billions of new air conditioners coming
online in the next 30 years.
I think we're just excited to be able to use
this new technology for good.
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CARL AZUZ: Before we head out today,
we have a really sweet story about Phoebe and Frankie.
Phoebe is the mama elephant.
Frankie is her nine-week-old calf.
They live and play together at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio.
Frankie, which I think is the perfect name,
was named after a woman called Frances.
She was the mother of a zoo supporter.
The Asian elephant calf looks really cute,
but he would be a handful to cuddle.
At two months, Frankie weighed more than 460 pounds.
So Frankie, frankly, would be, frankly, hefty to heft.
But we're sure he does an ele-fantastic job of hoisting
and hauling in visitors who pack it during the place
just to check out the trunk show.
Hey, want to thank you for checking out our new show.
Today's shout out goes out to Francis Howell High School.
It is located in St. Charles, Missouri.
If you don't go there and you want a chance to get
your school mentioned, please subscribe and leave
a comment at youtube.com/cnn10.
I'm Carl Azuz.
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