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COY WIRE: Hello, everyone.
It's your boy, Coy.
Wonderful Wednesday to you.
Last week, so many of you accepted my challenge,
you giving me a unique word of your choice
to work into the show.
We had a lot of fun responses.
So we're doing it again.
It's Your Word Wednesday.
Follow me Coy Wire on Insta, Snapchat, and TikTok,
and put your challenge words in the comment
section of my most recent post.
And we're going to choose one fun word
to work into Friday's show.
All right, it's time for the best 10 minutes in news
because it's with you, right here on CNN 10.
We start with news on a winter storm.
This week, all across the country, winter storm warnings,
winter storm watches, and winter weather advisories
have been issued by the National Weather Service.
The strong start to the snow season
is in place for an area that extends as far
east as the upper Midwest, northern Great Lakes,
and interior parts of the Northeast.
In fact, 25 million people, from Texas to Mississippi,
are under threat of severe storms.
In the South, two tornado watches
are in effect, one in the Dallas area,
the other in Southern Oklahoma.
And about 15 million people, largely in the North Central
US, are under winter weather warnings or advisories,
including fears of intense snow, ice, hail, and freezing rain.
These storms are leaving a trail of damage,
especially in parts of Oklahoma and Texas,
where buildings were wiped off of their foundation,
and homes and businesses were seriously damaged.
In addition, roads were closed and traffic was delayed.
This remains a developing story.
We're going to keep you updated, right here on CNN 10,
throughout the rest of this week.
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10-second trivia, in science, what
is occurring when two atoms slam together
to form a heavier atom, combustion,
fusion, fission, or oxidation?
[BEEPING]
Answer, here is, fusion, when two or more atoms are joined
together to make a larger atom.
This week, scientists with the US Department of Energy
have reached a breakthrough in nuclear fusion.
For the first time ever, in a lab setting,
researchers say they generated more
energy from a fusion reaction than they
used to start the process.
We're talking two or more atoms being fused
together to form a larger one.
And if scientists figure this out, fine tune it, and harness
this capability, we could potentially
power our entire house from essentially, a glass of water,
forever.
This could help end dependence on fossil fuels.
Talk about a game changer in the future of clean energy.
We'll go now to CNN National Correspondent, Rene Marsh,
for more of the science behind the story.
RENE MARSH: Well, scientists at a Department of Energy Lab
in California have figured out how
to successfully produce a nuclear fusion reaction
with a net energy gain.
That means they've succeeded in taking two hydrogen atoms
and using 192 powerful lasers to force those atoms to fuse
together, unleashing the same kind of energy
that powers the sun and stars.
Until now, that has been incredibly difficult
to replicate here on Earth.
The key is, though, that they've been able to release more
energy from the reaction than they use in the fusion process
itself.
And that's critically important.
For anything to be a viable source,
it needs to have a higher energy output than the energy input
used to generate the power.
So this is a huge moment, mostly because the discovery could
eventually unlock an unlimited, cheap, clean
power source for the world.
Now this discovery has also proved
this is a viable energy source and no
longer a hypothetical scenario.
But as major as this is in the quest to pivot away
from dirty energy sources like fossil fuels,
we're still a far way off from powering our homes
by way of nuclear fusion.
It's estimated it could take two,
even three decades before this energy source is widely used.
Rene Marsh, CNN, Washington.
COY WIRE: When Hurricane Ian pummeled Florida
in late September, it brought over $50 billion in damage
to the state and tragically took the lives of 148 people.
It also had an unexpected consequence.
It destroyed Florida's bee colonies.
The colonies are used to pollinate
the nation's agriculture.
CNN Chief Climate Correspondent, Bill Weir,
spoke to Florida beekeepers about what this could mean.
KEITH COUNCELL: Now you've got to get a handful of bees.
BILL WEIR: Really? KEITH COUNCELL: Yeah.
BILL WEIR: OK.
[LAUGHS]
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): I'm not usually in the habit
of accepting a handful of stinging insects.
But Keith Councell has a 40-year professional relationship
with honey bees.
BILL WEIR: And you never-- rarely wear
a veil or gloves or anything?
KEITH COUNCELL: Don't really need to.
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): And these days, they
need all the love they can get.
Hurricane Ian arrived at the worst possible time
for this business, just as beekeepers from around
the country were set up to catch the autumn bloom
of the Brazilian peppertree.
KEITH COUNCELL: The whole yard went under.
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): The storm drowned and crushed
hundreds of thousands of hives, killing
countless millions of bees.
KEITH COUNCELL: It's gone.
We'll have to come back.
There ain't nothing left.
You could actually see a water line, where it came up to here.
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): And because Ian
blew away so much vegetation, those that survived
are starving.
KEITH COUNCELL: Some of these bees
have gotten three shots of feed.
And that's a gallon.
So you're talking about 36 pounds of feed already.
And you can still go back, after they suck the feed down,
and it looks like they never were fed at all.
BILL WEIR: They're just starving?
KEITH COUNCELL: They're just starving.
Yeah, it's nonstop.
So it's just an added cause.
And you're just trying to do the best.
You have to make that tough decision of really,
is it worth the money, the financial cost,
to try to save it?
Or do you just have to walk away and take your medicine?
BILL WEIR: This is all bee food?
- This will be used for liquid bee food, yeah.
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): At Mann Lake Bee and Egg Supply,
they're mixing sugar water as fast as they can.
And while some bee farmers file for federal relief,
the Greater Good charity is giving away a quarter
ton of pollen substitute.
- We have donated meals to food pantries for humans.
We've donated animal supplies to animal shelters.
And now we're donating this bee-pollen substitute
to these farmers, here.
BILL WEIR: You can't forget the bottom of the food chain,
right?
- You can't forget what helps get all the other food
to the table as well.
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): But even if their bees recover,
the whole business depends on the health of the almond crop,
in California, now shrinking under mega drought.
BILL WEIR: If the drought takes out the almond
crop in California that--
- The whole beekeeping industry is going to be in trouble.
And there's no feral bees.
There's no-- wild bees can't survive on their own.
BILL WEIR: He explains that pesticides, development,
and invasive pests have made it impossible for bees
to survive without deliberate human care.
- And if all the beekeepers released all of their bees,
every beekeeper in the country, if they just released all
their bees into the wild, we estimate
it'd be about two to three years before bees
would just collapse.
Bees are the most important farmer.
They're the most forgotten as well.
And that's why we just need the entire public
to really continue to get involved in bees.
And a little-- two beehives makes a big impact.
KEITH COUNCELL: They went totally underwater,
somehow made it.
BILL WEIR (VOICEOVER): In the meantime,
all Keith can do is pick up the pieces
and focus on the survivors, like the hive
he found drowned inside a water-meter box
near Fort Myers Beach.
KEITH COUNCELL: It's a different feeling when you
have bees walking all over you.
BILL WEIR: It really is.
It really is.
KEITH COUNCELL: And nobody's getting stung.
BILL WEIR: No.
KEITH COUNCELL: You know, they're doing their thing.
[BEE BUZZING]
BILL WEIR: Maybe they can sense we're rooting for them,
you know?
KEITH COUNCELL: Well, and that's--
BILL WEIR: We appreciate them.
KEITH COUNCELL: That's part of the thing.
You have to treat them with respect.
When you get down to it, the bees are
the pillars to all agriculture.
And they're the pillars to our whole civilization.
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COY WIRE: And up next, an adorable story for our 10
out of 10.
The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care
and Control has strict rules about what types of animals
people can have in their yards.
But they were hit with cuteness overload
when they got a letter from a six-year-old Madeline,
asking if they'd let her keep a unicorn in their backyard
if she's able to catch one someday.
Well, knowing that unicorns are notoriously difficult to find
in Los Angeles, the Department went ahead and gave her
a stuffed unicorn in the meantime,
along with a permanent unicorn license.
Good luck, Madeline.
All right, special shoutout to Valley View Junior High
in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Go, Blazers.
We hope you, and everyone watching around the world,
have a wonderful one.
Can you believe that we're fewer than three
weeks until 2022 is over?
Oh, I can't wait to celebrate the new year with you.
I'm Coy Wire.
And this is CNN 10.
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