HURRICANE IAN CAUSES CARNAGE
Climate change is causing more powerful storms
FLORIDA is reeling from its worst hurricane in decades – roads, cars and buildings were washed away in the coastal US state after Hurricane Ian recently wreaked havoc in the region. Although it started as a tropical storm, Ian quickly morphed into a hurricane before ballooning into one of the fiercest natural disasters the area has ever seen. As the death toll grows, a new threat has emerged as rivers continue to rise, swollen with rainwater from the storm.
Distraught residents have been forced to wade through the waist-deep water to get into rescue boats. “You have no idea what’s in that water,” says Heath Farabell, who’s part of the rescue team. “In Florida, we have alligators.”
The extreme rainfall from the powerful hurricane was 10% higher than usual because of climate change, according to experts. “Climate change didn’t cause the storm, but it did cause it to be wetter,” says Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
“The reality is that climate change is here and it’s altering events here and around the world,” he adds.
IT CAN wave, bend its knees and dance to the beat – but tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla robot, Optimus, still needs to learn to walk. The SA-born mogul recently rolled out his bot at Tesla’s AI Day, held in Palo Alto, California, to demonstrate the company’s advances in artificial intelligence.
Musk showed off a prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot, who waved to the audience and did a little jig. A video was also shown of the bot performing simple tasks, such as watering plants, carrying boxes and lifting metal bars.
Optimus is still a work in progress, but Musk says the robot, which he estimates will cost less than $20 000 (R360 000) will be available commercially in three to five years’ time.
Although he has in the past warned of AI being a threat to humanity, Musk says Tesla wants to make sure it’s safe. “We always want to be careful we don’t go down the Terminator path.”