Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing.

Millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing.

New technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.

And TikTok could go away as we know it.

Tick Tock app under scrutiny for security concerns as.

We get into Christmas.

We're looking at maybe twenties for lows.

Highs in the forties.

Preparing for extreme cold in the coming days.

The solution to the issue of carbon in the atmosphere is in the oceans.

Underground carbon capture.

Not so fast.

Those higher prices that we're all feeling when we go to the store.

That's translating into higher sales tax revenues.

The big state budget estimates a plan to restore power much faster after a strong hurricane knocks it out is the big news.

Entergy, Louisiana is pitching this week.

A $10 billion plan over ten years to harden the grid.

The company filed it with the Public Service Commission on Monday, and that five member panel will take a long, hard look at it and respond at some point.

Entergy says it would strengthen about 270,000 structures and build transmission lines in some areas to withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour.

And it would be Entergy's biggest investment ever to harden the grid.

It'd be similar to what Florida did after storms blasted them in 2425.

Florida's beefed up grid held up better after Hurricane Ian this year and far better than we fared in either or.

Laura.

Almost two years ago, Louisiana saw record breaking cold with northern Louisiana temperatures plunging into the single digits.

The freeze lasted for four days, some losing power and heat.

Next week, we may not have a freeze, but we will definitely see temperatures drop again.

Very calm.

Louisiana state climatologist is here to give us some tips on how to cope with the cold.

Thank you so much for joining us.

My pleasure.

So the last time we were talking, you were here talking about, you know, winter weather and having storms and tornadoes and now we're here talking about freeze.

Yes.

So I tell you what's happened.

The atmosphere has set us off up into a configuration where it created a superhighway for air, basically out of northern Canada, perhaps even out of Siberia.

One over the North Pole and just jettisoned all that cold air down toward the Gulf Coast.

And it's been a brutal day.

It's been, you know, ten teams across northern parishes, towns across south Louisiana.

And much of the state didn't even get above freezing today.

So it.

And tomorrow, by the way, is not going to be much better.

Well, it's not going to be much better.

What about going into next week and Christmas and all that?

What are we going see?

Yeah, so?

So tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be very much like today.

We're probably looking at, you know, teens and twenties for lows, high temperatures in the thirties as we get into Christmas.

We're looking at maybe twenties for lows.

Highs in the forties.

So a modest warming trend, but still pretty cold.

And it's going to stay pretty chilly for, you know, into early next week.

So this this cold air is really going to settle in and it's going to take a few days to break up this pattern and get some warm air back in here.

Now for people like me, this is very exciting.

I've always wanted to have a cold Christmas, but I know for some people, this is this is awful.

This is a nightmare.

Yeah.

Because a lot of people are thinking about 20, 21 and February when we had that that big freeze all over the state.

But these temperatures are not going to be anything like that.

Well, the problem with the event in 2021 was, you know, there was freezing rain and things of that nature, which takes down power lines which, you know, knocks out power, obviously, at year one of the worst possible times when the temperature is dipping down so low and it's hard to maintain any heat and it's just, you know, that is miserable.

This event is not really shaping up to be a, you know, a freezing rain or, you know, mixed precipitation event.

It's just we're going to get some rain on the front end and then that cold air is going to come barreling on in.

And it's just going to be a lot of cold.

Now, there are certain things we do need to prepare for this, though.

So do you want to talk about that?

Oh, I definitely do.

I mean, whenever 2021 happened and that freeze situation was going on, I had no idea what to do with my house.

I did not have water, did not have power, was very cold.

But these are things that I didn't know about.

I didn't know what to do.

So what do you recommend?

So obviously it's the four P's, pets, plants, pipes and people.

So the pets are kind of obvious.

So if you have pets, they need to be indoors in this kind of weather.

It's just too cold.

The the plants, you know, have you have things in pots.

Obviously, they should be brought in as well.

Anything, you know, any tender vegetation is not going to survive this.

If you have things that can't be moved outside, kind of like I do, I have a nice birds of paradise I've had for decades.

I mean, you just need to go out there and cover it up as best you can.

And in essence, what that does is it traps the long way of radiation coming up from the earth and it stays a little warmer up under that that that cover that you put there and that can help save a lot of your plants outdoors.

In terms of your pipes, I mean, that's fairly obvious.

You need to insulate, you know, things that are out outside, but you also want to drip your faucets when in this extreme cold.

Now, I say drip.

I want to emphasize this because, you know, the water utilities have all sorts of issues with low water pressure because everybody's dripping their faucets.

Right.

So you really want to make this as fine as you possibly can just to keep the water moving a little bit in your pipes.

But you don't want to be greedy and lower the water pressure for everybody because we all suffer from that.

So so you just want to take care of your pipes.

And then, of course, people, this is where you need to, you know, look after your your look after the elderly, look after your neighbors that, you know, may not have everything in place and, you know, to get through these kinds of things.

So take care of each other.

I mean, it's Christmas time.

Just reach out and and make sure everybody weathers this particular storm here.

And then, of course, take care of yourself.

You know, you want to when you go out, the coldest point in the day is right near sunrise.

In fact, it's like usually like 2 minutes after sunrise on the average, those hours around sunrise, that's the coldest point in the day.

You don't want to be out and about in the freezing cold.

Then if you can wait till later in the afternoon when the temperature jumps up a little bit like, believe me, 35 is a lot better than 20.

Yeah, they're both, in my opinion, they're both miserably cold, but one is more miserable than the other.

So, you know, just be smart about it.

It also makes sense to have your car gassed up just in case if you lose and if you lose power, I mean, at least at least you have that and go drive around, warm up in your car.

Well, thank you so much for coming in and make us.

Yeah, stay stay warm.

And earlier this year, I talked with the CEO of a global company using technologies to eliminate harmful cyanobacteria, algae from lakes and oceans of any size.

Now, blue, green water technologies says it has developed a solution for the removal of gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere by focusing on oceans.

Here's my conversation with Al Harrell.

Your thoughts on carbon capture and net zero in reaching that, the best way to reach that.

So I totally agree.

I think net zero and the whole story of the carbon removal and the reduction of carbon emissions worldwide is, is something applicable proportions, I think, in the history of humankind.

We've never seen a single cause, a good one for a change that unites almost all governments around the world.

Almost all corporates around the world.

And so many individuals all joining behind a single flag to improve the quality of of of life on Earth on a time scale perspective.

It's completely new.

I mean, this thing has been going on for quite some time since probably least since the Kyoto Protocol a couple of decades ago.

But when you're looking at when things really started getting traction, essentially the Paris Accord, that's in 2015 and especially since about two years ago.

So you get all this money and all this pressure.

Generated all over the world to achieve the single very important cause and I think is a general statement.

This is an amazing progress for humanity in the right direction.

So the question of permanency is key.

And and what we're trying to advocate is that since the oceans and since water is the natural regulator of carbon in the atmosphere, since the oceans of the world are story and present time, one third of all carbon in the world.

The solution to the issue of carbon in the atmosphere is in the oceans.

Now there is not only a single solution that can be identified and used, there are multiple solutions.

But the problem is of today is that the the focus, everybody's attention is directed into land based solutions.

And those unfortunately, really unfortunately, those are limited in scale because to the extent that you can put to the extent you can put filters on chimneys, to the extent that you can build facilities that would somehow with minimal input of energy, take all this air and bring it into its molecules and then store some of the CO2 which will then be taken somewhere in there and all that.

And assuming all that is in itself carbon neutral, then how scale could that possibly be?

And the largest examples today are simply generating insignificant numbers that in order to turn to get up on scale, which is what is needed in order to to turn them into gigaton scale, would mean something that we can not do.

It is estimated today that after everything is instead and done, we'll still have to reduce the take out of the atmosphere, mechanically or otherwise.

Take out of the atmosphere 5 to 10 billion tonnes of carbon every year as of 2015.

5 to $10 billion out of those $510 billion, one in $1 billion will have to be taken directly out of the atmosphere.

So we'll have to create the mechanisms or invent the technologies that will suck up all this CO2 out of the atmosphere $1 billion a year.

For reference, the amount of carbon that is known as the BSE or the direct air capture, the amount of direct air capture that is the capacity of carbon that is to get out of the atmosphere today in 2010, the end of 2022, we talk about 10,000 dots.

Again, remember, 1 billion in 2050, 10,000 tonnes.

That's what's available to everything in the pipeline combined.

A best case scenario, everything works and in any scalable you reach a million.

A million tonnes a year out of the billion that is needed.

I mean, even even if you're looking at the peak just behind the quarter, forget 20, 2050, the hope Diamond, think about 2030, you know, all the governments and all the companies of the world and say, you know, net zero targets for 2050 with ambitious ambitious goals for 2030.

So by 2030 will need to joint reduce about $9,090 million in their your recapture and again to cut the capacity today with everything that is available plus everything that is not yet available but we have thought about in total is the million a little bit more than 1%.

That kind of explains how far we are from the target we're setting for tomorrow with 2030.

And that's for the challenges.

We know it's a monumental bill that has to be climbed, to say the least.

And let's talk about what you're doing compared to burying under the ground in simple terms and one versus the other.

This is not a single company's effort.

This is a global effort.

But by any stretch, this is going to be a complicated fight in order for all of us to achieve success here.

So.

So I will come.

I encourage everybody to join the on this journey.

We is a company that is developing a new methodology for calculating how much carbon we actually sequester into the cost of remediating harmful algal blooms.

We share that methodology as an open source.

We urge anybody who wants to use it.

To use it.

Anybody who wants to challenge you to challenge it.

We're open for an open debate around that equation.

We think it's for the benefit of everybody around the much, much discussion and as much practice as possible.

Exactly.

For the reasons that you just mentioned.

What we're doing is what is known generally speaking, is nature based.

Trees are also nature based.

And by nature it's a very broad term.

And and there are different nature based solutions.

Trees is one and slowly but surely different methodologies are being developed that are moving into the into water.

Because as we've mentioned before, water is the natural regulator of carbon in the atmosphere.

And so you're seeing more and more species are getting near.

So the the ones that already enjoy having a verified methodology is not blue carbon, blue carbon in, for example, mangroves, trees are basically forests that grow in shallow waters, in seagrass or shallow waters.

And you get all this vegetation that just like trees, they, you know, they photosynthesis.

They capture all this carbon to create biomass, to create more substance.

And by doing so, they basically sap all this CO2 out of the atmosphere.

And this is this is a natural solution that if you encourage it properly, you'll get the results that you're trying to achieve in the methodology for those ideas are already in place and they are being practiced today.

Again, the problem with those ideas is that they're very, very limited in terms of space and their capacity to grow, ultimately to create a mangrove or tree or the eucalyptus trees are joined by the fact that they grow very, very slowly.

Unfortunately, their ability to absorb CO2 is quite limited, and that is in stark contrast to algae.

Algae grows 400 times faster than trees.

Algae can double in biomass every couple of hours.

That means that the ability of algae to absorb CO2 is unpolished to anything in nature or out of nature.

Was your goal.

To capture the carbon or was it just to clean the algae?

That was choking the water and the lights?

We started off with a global problem that was exasperated by global warming, which was harmful algal blooms, the cover of 60 million lakes around the world, 30 million square kilometers of ocean.

It's a massive problem.

The cause of $70 billion in damages every year.

And they were untreatable in the process of remediating harmful algal blooms.

We knew we were sequestering vast quantities of carbon, but that could not be monetized up until recently due to some other breakthroughs within our organization that allow us today to quantify just how much carbon we're actually able to sequester.

Because it goes back to the question you asked before.

How do you even know that you get all that carbon out of the equation?

How do you quantify the how, let alone argue, monetize stuff?

But with recent breakthroughs, we've been able to do so.

Have you talked to people in.

Louisiana about this?

So we had a short conversation with the governor's office, but it was my impression that they were not there in terms of, you know, putting together a plan for a statewide net zero plan.

So, again, the conversation is still at an early stage in the hope that we can pick it up in the in the discussion.

There's a lot of potential for not only for carbon removal in the state of Louisiana, but also for harmful algal bloom remediation, because that's also a problem that is bleeding Louisiana's lakes.

And you can see those two birds with one stone here.

There are many testimonials praising Blue Green's work, but I wanted to hear for myself, so I called the mayor's office in Chippewa Lake, Ohio, and a community leader there.

But Hardesty told me after just one application, within 24 hours, the toxic algae on their lake was gone.

But Hardesty told me it was, quote, like watching magic happen.

And Tick Tock is a video sharing social media app that shows you content on just about anything.

But recently, U.S. officials are questioning how secure the app really is and if US citizens should be using it at all.

In states like Iowa and Maryland, lawmakers have banned the tiktok's use for state workers and similar calls for a ban are coming in from officials right here in Louisiana.

Here to talk about this topic is political commentator Jim Inkster.

Jim, thank you so much for joining us.

So first, let's talk about what are the security concerns that U.S. officials are worried about?

I think generally it's about elections and whether there can be fraud through the technology which is available.

And we're talking about a billion people on the planet who are TikTok users.

That's about one out of eight people.

It's an amazing success story in just six years.

And it's obviously evident across the United States are people who spend a lot of time of their day on Tik Tok and a lot of information is available.

Who?

There's facial recognition.

There are things that can be done to perhaps perpetuate fraud of all kinds.

And in Louisiana, the secretary of state, Kyle Ardoin, has expressed a concern about election integrity because of the technology of Tik Tok, which is owned by a Chinese company.

And that, I think, is the biggest question.

Former President Trump called for an all out ban unless the chinese sold tik tok.

So we'll see where it goes.

But the concern is valid.

But at this point, all the calls for bans on use involve state use, not personal use.

And I think that's where the rub comes if people are prohibited from using Tik Tok on a personal basis.

So like you were saying, I mean, this isn't the first time people have talked about banning Tik Tok whenever Trump was in office.

I do remember this coming up and people were very concerned about it.

But why just banning state use and not personal use if they're worried about election integrity?

I think they're worried about getting into state machines, state technology, personal use is not as much of a concern.

It could be, though.

And of course, I think that's a concern for people who use it personally and like it is.

Will my tik tok be taken away?

But right now it looks like it's going to be directed at state use and we certainly want our elections to be secure.

We don't want any chicanery on that level.

We are talking about the very process of our country if our elections are insecure or so, this is a safeguard.

And in Maryland, it's being done by an outgoing Republican governor who is no fan of former President Trump and the incoming governor.

Governor, there is a Democrat.

So you would think they at least conferred on this.

And it appears that this may very well have bipartisan support.

So here in Louisiana, I mean, like you said, secretary of state has brought this up.

Is it possible that we'll be joining both Iowa and Maryland and have our state workers not use TikTok?

It is possible.

I think this will be a campaign issue for governor.

And we're talking about an election now that is inside ten months and right now, the two Republicans who are the frontrunners or one who's in the race, Jeff Landry, the attorney general, and one who might be in the race.

U.S.

Senator John Kennedy, they are both acolytes, if you will, of former President Trump.

They like him and have been supportive of him on any number of fronts.

And they quite likely agreed with his position on Tick-Tock.

So we'll see what they propose as potential governors.

And it's something, of course, that all the Democrats and other candidates will weigh in on as well.

There are lots of pros and cons to taking away an entire social media app.

So are there any negatives to doing something like this?

Are there any, you know, pros?

Well, in America, we're accustomed to freedom, but something like this is is a safeguard of sorts.

But when you look at the countries that have banned Tik Tok, most of them are not democratic governments.

They're they're places like Iran.

And we're not a government like Iran, thank goodness.

So we'll see how this goes.

But this in the United States would be a last resort, not a first option.

But I do think that we'll see what happens on the state level.

And if that is insufficient, then Tik Tok could go away as we know it.

But right now it appears that it will be limited to those who are involved in government issues and government views.

All right.

So there's a lot to weigh here and a lot of a lot that's at stake.

But thank you so much for coming in and talking about this topic.

My pleasure.

Happy holidays.

And when the state legislature begins its 2023 session, it will have an extra one and a half billion dollars of money in the budget, which has been forecast now by the revenue Estimating panel.

Steven Barnes.

Dr. Steven Barnes, who is busy with Lafayette, Kathleen Blanco Center and also as a member of the Revenue Estimating Conference, you're part of that group.

This is a number you had come up with and it's a surprise.

It's a huge number.

It wasn't made for us.

Well, it certainly means that the legislature is going to have a lot of additional money to spend.

We're going to have to decide what are our priorities looking forward and where are the greatest needs across state government.

I think it's important, though, at a at a really high level to think about how this compares to year over year, because this in many ways is more a reflection of the economy has held.

So we're seeing a good outlook for revenues compared to what we had feared last time we met, which is that we might start to see more of a slowdown.

People, if they would here we have this huge surplus, if they understand a lot of that is COVID related money.

But the economy and the price of gas and groceries, those aren't things making people feel any better.

That's right.

I think there is a little disconnect between kind of some of the economic anxiety that a lot of people are feeling right now.

And what sounds like a good news story that revenues for the state are looking good and at a time we're all time low unemployment.

That's right.

There's some there are some positive signals out there in the economy.

There are also some pretty significant areas of concern, most notably inflation.

And in fact, when we think about those higher prices that we're all feeling when we go to the store, that's translating into higher sales tax revenues.

So something that might be an area of economic concern does generate more revenue, which which is something that we'll have to think about.

And as I say, higher oil prices also, right?

That's right.

That's right.

Price sectors into the.

That's right.

Had been quite strong and has has factored into, you know, our what we feel at the pump.

The one thing we know right now that needs attention would be early childhood education.

Some of the child welfare programs, education across the board.

These are things that we know this money could be used for.

What else would be a priority in your mind?

Well, I think it's it is really important that we step back and we think about what are we spending our money on through state government?

That is in part because we're seeing such high inflation and alongside that, a parallel trend of increasing wages.

Mm hmm.

That's going to be something that comes back to be a real challenge for state government when we see the costs of running state government going up and up over time.

That's true for highway and bridge projects.

That's also true for what we need to be thinking about in terms of teacher pay and levels of funding for early childhood.

I mean, this is sort of the time to seize the moment, it seems like, to take advantage of it and be prudent at the same time.

That's right.

That's right.

I think we want to make sure that we're putting those dollars where our priorities are.

We don't want to overextend ourselves.

I think making sure that we continue to use a significant chunk of that for one time funding so we don't lock ourselves up in a higher level of spending that we can't sustain.

And then also, as a director of the Blanco Public Policy Center, I will always say yes, let's make sure that we are tracking what we do and everyone.

That's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything, LTV, any time, wherever you are with our Lvb PBS app.

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And please like us on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram.

For everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre.

Morelli, and I'm crossing here.

Until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions.

Of dollars to keep the lights on.

And installing.

New technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Zeigler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.