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tv   Click  BBC News  June 30, 2019 12:30pm-1:01pm BST

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with them it is down to 11 degrees or m degrees. tomorrow the chance of the odd shower across northern and western scotland and one or two passing showers across northern ireland and north west england. elsewhere dry whispers of sunshine and temperatures between 17 degrees and temperatures between 17 degrees and 21 degrees. —— dry spells of sunshine. hello this is bbc news. donald trump says it's a "great day for the world" after his walk across the border between north
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and south korea this morning. he met the north korean president. a baby — delivered after its mother was stabbed to death — remains in a critical condition in hospital — two men have now been arrested. jeremy hunt brands the question over the uk's departure date from the eu a ‘fake debate' claiming he would deliver brexit sooner than boris johnson. the shadow chancellor, labour'sjohn mcdonnell conceded he's frustrated by labour's lack of progress on its brexit position while the head of the unite union asks thatjeremy corbyn is given more time. new rules mean electric cars must now make a noise — when travelling at lower speeds. england play india in a crucial world cup group stage game at edgbaston. time now for click. 999 — this is a climate emergency.
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and this week we have greener, cleaner buildings, robot boat exhaust sniffers, and artificial trees. i want to share with you a fact that i hadn't fully understood until i met climate scientist ed hawkins last year. now, i'd known that our weather was getting worse and our sea levels were rising, and i'd known that global warming was happening because we were emitting carbon dioxide and methane into the air at a runaway rate, but what i hadn't fully understood is this — simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not bring global
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warming under control. for every ton of c02 that we put into the atmosphere the temperature goes up a little bit more. in order to stop global warming we need to do something very drastic indeed. if we end up in a world where our emissions are net zero, we're not increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere any more, then that will stabilise global temperatures at the point at which we do that. but it's not realistic. to reduce global temperatures we would need to somehow remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. now, there are already ways of capturing c02 at source — on its way out of power stations, for example. but this doesn't get it all, by any means. what you need is something to pull
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c02 back out of the air. what you need is something like this. it's called the artificial tree. the air passes through these filters, which are made of a very special material because the c02 actually clings to this material as the air passes over it. now, once these filters are saturated with carbon dioxide this whole thing moves down into a container of water where this particular material releases the c02 into the sealed container and then, congratulations, you've captured yourself some c02 from the air. this is the brainchild of klaus lackner, here at the aptly named negative emissions centre at arizona state university. they realised very early on this was a waste management problem. we are dumping c02 into the atmosphere and itjust stays there.
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so it was very clear to me in the early 90s that sometime in the 21st—century we will have to stop emitting. klaus was the first scientist — back in 1999 — to publish a scientific paper suggesting carbon capture from the air was a feasible way of combating climate change. the problem was no—one seemed to be listening. if you look at the climate change problem, in the ‘90s we had models which told us it's happening, but you couldn't really set which told us it's happening, but you couldn't really see it out in the real world, except with a microscope. in the 2000s you could measure it. it was happening. in the teens, now, you can see it happen, even as a non—expert. climate has changed. in the next decade, as it grows out of the noise, it becomes loud and clear and it starts to hurt. and once it hurts people say "what will we do about it?" klaus argues that since
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we are failing to meet our targets for lowering co2 emissions, carbon capture from the air is now unavoidable. and now people are listening, as technology has recently received commercial investment. we have put so much c02 in the air that we actually have to come back. so we call ourselves the center for negative carbon emissions because we are thinking about having a period in this century in which we will have to take 100 ppm back. now, that is more c02 than the world emitted in the 20th century. how many of these do you think we will need? a lot, a lot. now, these are very small. but go to the size of a shipping container, if you wanted to actually match current emissions you would need 100 million of them. right. now, these are bigger than that. but 100 million sounds like a horribly large number until you start deconstructing it. we build 80 million cars. shanghai harbour is sending out
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about 30 million full shipping containers every year. so i would argue that as far as industrial scale goes, this is large, but not outrageously large. so who would you suggest pays for these in the future? ultimately, it's part of the energy consumption, so you the consumer, in some form or another are on the hook. and as people around the world start to reach the conclusion that carbon capture is needed, a start—up scene is beginning to grow — with differing approaches. because c02 is everywhere, it doesn't really matter where you put your devices. and in iceland, caerix has something very useful — green geothermal power. using this, they claim to be able to capture way more carbon than klaus's artificial trees.
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and once you've captured the carbon, the next problem is — what are you going to do with it? there are so many r&d projects under way trying to make use of the c02, so that it's notjust rubbish, but we can actually make something valuable from it. we can use the c02 to create drinks, beers or soda or whatever. we can also use c02 forfuel production. there are also currently studies ongoing to see if we can somehow use the c02 as a building material. yeah, in the future we may be able to lock c02 into concrete. although the amount of rock we'd create has been estimated to cover a landmass the size of egypt. and, in fact, to do this any other way also requires a scale that is pretty unimaginable. you could say we can do it
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with trees and real forests, and you can calculate if you wanted to do the same 100 million of these units in forests or any agriculture, any photosynthetic systems, you suddenly realise that the land area or the area you need is larger than current agriculture. you know, pastoral lands, fields, everything added, we would need more than that. welcome to the week in tech. it was the week where a city in florida paid almost £a00,000 in bitcoin to get its data back from ransomware hackers who'd locked up their computers with malware. engineers at toyota built a world record breaking free throwing basketball droid. 03 managed 2020 executive successful shots. former uk deputy prime minister sir
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nick clegg says there's absolutely no evidence russia influenced the brexit results using facebook. clegg is now a vice—president at facebook. and up to 20 million manufacturing jobs could be at risk by 2030 as a result of robots replacing human workers. so says the analysis outfit 0xford analytics. the study reveals that on average each new industrial robot eliminates 1.6 human manufacturing jobs. a new electric car has been announced that boosts its range to a50 miles, with the help of solar panels on its bonnet, roof, and boot. called the lightyear 0ne, its price is expected to be a whopping £135,000. no word yet on when a production model is expected. and, finally, rasputin may have played a part in the fall of the house of romanov, but who knew he could belt out a tune like beyonce? this new form of deepfaking
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is the work of samsung's ai centre at imperial college london. deepfakes can now be generated using just one image of a subject before the ai algorithm goes to work. # halo... this is quite a scene. the dancers here are being choreographed by artificial intelligence, which has learned from moves created by a leading choreographer — and it's quite something. wayne mcgregor has been running his dance company for 25 years, so has an archive perfect for thejob. wayne is actually here today, but he seems to be focusing on perfecting the moves rather than designing a whole dance. a computer algorithm is analysing hundreds of hours of his dance creations, sparking new personalised routines ready for a show in la next month.
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so how does he feel seeing what the technology musters up? you see it on the screen and it's surprising, it's something you've not seen before. you can't quite work out how your body can do that and then the dancers in the room have to translate it, they find, they have to look at it and find a way of themselves embodying the physicality. the imagery used could improve over time, but there is also a reason for the imperfections. this has been the creation of the man behind google cardboard, who greatly values technology as a tool to enhance — not reduce — creativity. of course the dancer, the choreographer is the artist and the ai is there to stimulate creativity and not to replace it. we display some stick figure just to display the whole output of the algorithm, but we are also making a rendering which is something in between abstraction and the skeleton.
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and if it was too perfect then it would look like a video and it would be less stimulating for the dancer to be inspired. and as well as the idea of immortalising talent and teaching, there seems to be some other added value. what it's doing is supplementing, enhancing, dealing with data in a way that we couldn't deal with it, offering us opportunities that we would never be able to see. and so in a way it becomes like an 11th dancer in the studio with you, it's a kind of a creative partner rather than one that's replacing your kind of creative gifts, if you like. the other thing is, it's really important, it's about the dialogue between machine and body, between the thinking body and the thinking machine. so it's not ever that we set the system going and just learn the choreography, that's not interesting to us. these dancers make every move looks so graceful, so it's hard to imagine a bad outcome being created here. but how do they feel about being taught by ai? usually you have wayne come
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in and he either gives us creative tasks himself, which could be based on anything, it could be a poem, it could be audio inspiration from a track, but to have these really intelligent quick systems that kind of generate movement that then we have to learn from, an ai system, it's very different. whatever the google stick men are demonstrating, just take something from it. you know, we don't spend too long analysing. it's really find each other. it's just whatever you see, take something from it. at the moment it doesn't understand momentum and physics and gravity, so it makes us move our bodies in an incredibly different way. you know, we have a typical vocabulary, each and every one of us, that we kind of go into that we try to strive away from, and i think that this helps us do that. so while its early days for this technology and it doesn't seem to be making the real—life choreographer
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redundant, maybe, just maybe, artificial intelligence could push creativity to a whole new level. that was lara. now, one often unseen cause of air pollution is shipping. the enormous cargo vessels which criss—cross the world produce enormous amounts of sulphur and nitrous oxides as well as particulate matter. by some calculations, one large container ship can produce the equivalent of tens of millions of cars‘ worth of these pollutants. but it is a field where much more measurement is needed to truly understand the scale of the problem and what can be done. paul carter has been to denmark to investigate how authorities there are using tech to better understand shipping and the pollution it causes. this sleepy, remote part of denmark
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may not look like it's at the cutting edge of emissions detection and enforcement. but looks can be deceiving. the danish maritime authority, in partnership with the european maritime safety agency, are using drones like this one as the latest weapon to detect and identify ships that are breaching eu regulations on emissions. this aircraft is equipped with a range of detectors and sensors, as well as 360 and infrared cameras, to identify ships and effectively sniff their emissions, by flying through the plume of smoke they leave behind. i am standing on the takeoff and landing zone for the drone that they use here, or rpas, to actually give it its correct term — it's out behind me somewhere finding a ship to sniff, for want of a better term, and i'm not sure if our camera can actually pick it up, but along the horizon there is a yellow band which is actually the pollution that these ships are emitting. if you can imagine what it was like
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before these regulations came in, and that is exactly what this aircraft is trying to detect. so this is a very innovative project, to protect the environment. how does it work, what we try to do is take as many measurements as possible of the sulphur content of the plume of the vessels, and this type of drone is adding proof of that infringement. because up to now what happened sometimes is that they were changing fueljust when entering the port, so this type of drone allows us to also take measurements while they sail. now it is going to be coming back in to land soon, and to be honest i don't really want to be stood here when it does, so i'm going to make a sharp exit. it is piloted by two people from a ground—based control centre. 0ne flying, and one monitoring the payload, as well as a team of ground—based engineers and observers. what's it like to fly one of these? it is quite good fun,
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it is different, i used to fly helicopters, so it is very different in that respect. but it is, in many ways as well, there is many similarities. drones react the same way as a helicopter would do, so then i can use experience as a helicopter pilot in this type of industry. it is nice to be able to do something for the environment as well. we can see when it's polluting a lot, then you can see the black smoke, but most of the time you don't see it, especially if the wind is pushing it down onto the side, you might not be able to see it. but we also have extra tools like an infrared camera to be able to see it, it might help us sometimes as well. so we have a sensor which monitors the c02 and the n02, and we also have the payload camera which you use to be able to see where you are going. the rpas, or remotely piloted aircraft system, is detecting for a wave of pollutants. all the data recorded is shared
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directly with the host member state, and also with emsa. now we can extend our reach by a huge margin, by flying these drones over the ships and collecting samples of the emissions, and then calculate back to how much sulphur is in the fuel. are they breaking the rules, or are they not, and then we can follow that up with actual inspections when the ship comes into port. and here it is coming into land, you can see it swooping around slightly just to accommodate for the wind, it is quite bizarre to think that even just a couple of minutes ago, that was a speck out there on the horizon, it has been out there for the last hour, hourand a half, inspecting any ships it has come across, now it's coming back in to land for a well—earned rest. we are the first movers with the type of technology used in this way, but as it gets easier and the regulation behind it
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matures, i think you will see this all over the place — and it is notjust for sulphur emissions, you could do so many things on sea, and that's what we are trying to do, we are trying to extend our reach, where can we go and enforce the rules that we are trying to enforce. denmark are the first eu member state to use this technology, but as regulations and legislation continue to emerge, soon no ship will be safe from similar sulphur sniffers. 0k, we're off to switzerland now for an innovative way of building homes more cleverly and more sustainably. dan simmons has been to see some unusual buildings, and the robots and very old wisdom used to build them. in zurich, the experimental odd shaped dfab house has recently opened its doors. it has been partially built by robots, and the lack of any tea
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breaks isn't the only cost saving. this flexible mesh mould allows for fast, creative design. the bots build the wall from digital models. these 1—offs would typically mean more materials are wasted than standard straight walls. but doing things this way results in hardly any material waste. elsewhere, these dynamic casting machines create both load—bearing functional supports and lighter facades, while 3d sand printers produce ultralight ceiling slabs. again, all with minimal waste. and that's important. because you may be surprised to learn that we are just a decade or two away from running out of materials to build with. we are rapidly running out of resources. as funny as it may sound, we are even running out of sand to make concrete. this particular floor actually
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is printed out of sand, but other materials could be compressed dirt, basicallyjust dirt locally found on site, or clay, or a combination of materials like that. these lighter and more varied choices of material will help us save the planet's resources, and to test what will and won't work, they need a huge sandpit in which to play. the university is home to one of the biggest robots, if you like, in the world. this is a large, well, house building plant. it has four or five of these huge arms to create different things, this is a floor that's in progress. the only problem is that once they have built it, they've got to get it out these doors. but look again at those ceilings and floors. they are more important than you might think. using different materials is all very well, as long as they are as strong
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as concrete, right? well, no. in fact, a change of design inspired from europe's stunning architectural past, is solving that problem. just like the flying buttresses of gothic cathedrals, arched slabs can support a lot of weight without requiring steel reinforcement. by studying traditional vaulted construction methods, researchers then use 3d printing to make super—thin floor slabs that can withstand heavy weights. what all these designs have in common is that they have strength through their geometry, through their design. they spread the weight of various areas and can take more weight once people are on them and support them, often with less material. in this example, the form that's needed to create the bridge is just a piece of material like this. rather than building up a huge support structure and pouring the concrete over the top.
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it uses less material, as do the slabs that the university have created now. through a different geometry, they can save up to 70% of the concrete needed. the upshot could be buildings that are just as strong as today's, but that end up weighing half as much — because the floors alone usually make up about 80% of a building's total weight. researchers say they comply with all swiss and eu building regulations, although the new designs are yet to be signed off. that was dan, and that's it for click episode 999. i know! we've been on air every week for over 19 years. and next week is our 1000th programme. to celebrate, we're doing something very special, and you're all invited. for the first time, rather than us
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deciding what you watch, you will be in the driving seat. because for our 1000th episode, the bbc is letting us pioneer a completely new way of making tv. we've created an interactive world of stories for you to explore however you wish. more than a year in the making, from the self driving capital of the world, phoenix, arizona, to magical malawi to meet the inventors using ai and ancient technology to solve everyday problems. combining the production techniques of videogames with that click storytelling that you know and love, you will be able to shape our show. and there'll be wizards. we've all worked really hard on this, and we are incredibly proud of the result. we hope you enjoy it too — that's next week. thanks for watching,
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and we'll see you for click 1000. yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far with temperatures in london reaching 3a celsius. today a special feeling, we still have beautiful blue sky and spells of sunshine, this is the picture this morning in north yorkshire. largely sunny and dry for many eastern and south—eastern parts of the uk. showers today, particularly towards the northwest, but you will notice things are feeling fresher. the reason for the fresh feel is that all of the hot air that was with us yesterday got squeezed over to the east
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overnight as this cold front made its way across the country. that brings a more of a westerly influence for us today. into this afternoon, heavy showers around parts of western scotland. for the likes of aberdeenshire, much of eastern and southern england and wales, stays dry through the day with temperatures up to about 25 degrees in the warmest spots. through this evening and tonight, we still have showers continuing across northwest scotland, a few possible for northern ireland and north west england. elsewhere, clear spells, and sleeping will feel more comfortable with temperatures between 11 and 1a degrees tomorrow morning. the week ahead, fairly settled, dry weather, sunshine, it'll feel warm but not as hot as recent days. showers across north—western parts of the uk. high pressure towards the south—west, low pressure setting off towards the north—east, and that combination means a north—westerly flow with, at times, fronts moving into northern parts of scotland. on monday, showery rain across
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northern and north—western scotland. some spots of rain into parts of northwest england the odd passing shower for northern ireland, too. elsewhere, dry weather, with that cloud tending to break up through the day. sunny spells and temperatures between 17 to 21 degrees, for most of us on monday, a touch cooler than it is out there today. that dry and settled theme continues into tuesday. after a fairly sunny start, cloud building through the day, it'll be fair weather cloud, most places dry, the odd shower for the far northwest of scotland, not as breezy, a fairly light wind, and temperatures between 15 to 21 degrees on tuesday. for the rest of the week, lots of dry weather, sunny spells, those temperatures, particularly in the south, starting to creep up towards the end of the week. goodbye...
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good afternoon. donald trump has become the first american president to set foot on north korean territory. he visited the demilitarised area between north and south korea, where he shook hands with the north's leader kim jong—un. 0ur seoul correspondent, laura bicker, sent this report.

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