Global News Podcast - 2024 warmest year on record

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

EU scientists say 2024 was the warmest year on record, and the first to exceed the 1.5C global warming limit. Also: Los Angeles residents return to their burnt-out homes, and is time running out for TikTok?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Lucy Hockings from the Global Story podcast, where we're looking at the world's richest man, Elon Musk, who is translating his power and influence in the world of technology to a new role in global politics. Not content with helping to run the next US government, he's also calling for new leadership in the UK and Germany. But why? And is anyone in those countries actually listening to him? The Global Story. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and at 14 Hours GMT on Friday the 10th of January, these are our main stories. 2024 is deemed to be the world's hottest year on record by scientists with temperatures

rising above an internationally recognised climate target for the first time. This comes as firefighters continue to battle wildfires in Los Angeles, where at least 10 deaths have been confirmed. Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, prepares to be sworn in for a third term despite a global outcry over alleged vote-rigging in last year's elections. Also in this podcast is time running out for TikTok in the US. And? They basically told me that anything that goes into the household, scrap bin, is compressed and buried. I just wish I could go back in time.

A man who lost Bitcoin worth as much as a billion dollars also loses his legal case to search the dump where it's thought to be buried. thought to be buried. For the past few days, the world has witnessed apocalyptic images of fires sweeping through Los Angeles. Now, even as the fires continue to rage, it's been confirmed that last year was the hottest on record. Not only that, the EU's climate monitoring service, Copernicus, says 2024 was also the

first calendar year to exceed the key global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The director of Copernicus, Carlo Buontempo, said the cause for the increase was the greenhouse gases would continue to pump into the atmosphere. The many record-breaking events we have seen over the course of the last 12 months are not statistical oddities, but rather a direct consequence of the generalized warming of our climate system, which is mostly fueled by the steady increase

in atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Henna Handel is National Coordinator of ClimateLive USA and a four-time delegate of the UN's climate change conference. We had the hottest summer on record, we had the hottest day on record. So it's not too far of a stretch to imagine that we'd have the hottest year on record. But I don't think that expectation diminishes how concerning this really is. And now the fact that 2024 is the hottest year on record is really concerning that we're going to breach that mark in sort of a long term way. And the impacts that we

were warning about those irreversible impacts if we breach that threshold might be in our near future. I got more details from our climate editor, Justin Rolat. The Copernicus climate change service says last year was 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Now that makes it the first Canada year to exceed that symbolic boundary of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. That was the boundary, the target, if you like, set that the world agreed to try and stick to, recognizing the science from the UN's climate science body that said there'd be significantly worse impacts from climate change, from global warming above 1.5. Now we haven't technically broken the target because that's a long-term, a

20-year average. What it is telling us though is just how close the world is coming to doing that in the longer term. So really worrying data. So even though we haven't yet technically breached that threshold that was agreed in Paris, the fact that the last 10 years have been the warmest ever, that ocean temperatures are now record highs, this all seems to indicate that we're really on a very destructive path and it doesn't seem the world is doing enough to combat climate change. No, the world certainly isn't. And what was particularly worrying is that climate scientists weren't expecting last year 2024 or 2023 to be as hot as they were. And they're not entirely sure why. One reason may be clouds. There's some evidence that low level clouds,

the clouds that reflect the radiation back from the Sun into space, the heat from the Sun back into space, there were fewer of those clouds than there have been historically. Now, they're not entirely sure why that is. It may be because of new regulations for ship emissions, or it could be to do with the nature of our changing climate. If the latter is the case, if fewer clouds that reflect radiation back into space are a result of climate change itself, we can expect a more rapid and accelerating warming trend.

One of the directors of Copernicus, she said to me, we're entering a new climate era for the human species. We evolved about 300,000 years ago. This is the hottest, they can say with certainty, the hottest for more than a hundred thousand years. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the highest it's been for eight hundred thousand years. And this comes just ten days before Donald Trump is due to become US president again, amid fears that he could pull the US out of the Paris climate accord again. Yeah, we're expecting that to happen and he could roll back climate regulations in the US. He's talked about trying to, he calls it the green scam, trying to

unpick if you like the inflation reduction act which was the big Biden legislation that commits hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to climate change in the US and there was a new scientific paper published yesterday talking about a kind of double fingerprint of climate change in the California fires. They call it climate whiplash. Higher temperatures mean we see more heat waves and droughts that obviously we saw in the Californian summer last year but we also see more rain. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and that's what we saw in the two years preceding these fires. More rain in California which allowed the vegetation to grow, the trees, shrubs, grasses to grow. When they dried

out in the summer and there were no winter rains dampening them last year, then you have this dry vegetation. It just takes one spark as we've seen. The seasonal Santa Ana winds to whip those flames up and we see the consequences unfolding in California as we speak. Just in Rolat, well as we record this podcast those wildfires in Los Angeles are known to have killed at least 10 people and to have destroyed thousands of homes even as firefighters are still battling to bring the fires under control amid reports the strong winds that have briefly died down are gathering strength again. The National Guard has been deployed in parts of the city amid reports of looting.

A man has been detained on suspicion of deliberately starting one of the fires. John Sudworth sent this report from one of the worst hit areas, Altadena. It's like all gone. It feels like heiroms from my great-great-grandparent. Tavia Weinman is sifting through a collection of metal keepsakes dug out from the still hot ashes of what used to be her home. That's the bookshelf. Look at all the books. She's a media producer living in Altadena, one of the areas devastated by the fires. With its

small homes and a close community feel, it's a far cry from the mansions and celebrity lifestyles on the other side of Los Angeles that's the focus of so much of the news coverage. And you've lost everything? Everything. Documents? Passports? We've grabbed our passports and our computers and that's essentially it. We're lucky that we have a great community and our son's school. Very great.

How old is your son, Tavia? Six. How is he coping? He's sad but he's a little sweetheart. He's just worried that his toys felt pain. You know, toy story. So we assured him they did it. So it's hard.

Oh, my God, Angie survived. What? Your little elephant box from Thailand. Where's my needles for sewing? They're all in there. Down the block, Pete Mitchell, an electrician at Disneyland, is combing through the embers of his home with his wife Angela.

This is my table saw. But there's very little left. It was full of smoke. You woke up and your lungs were burning, and you could see the flames. But we got out with all the dogs and the cat. That's 20 paws and five tails so we're good there. The couple have insurance but not everyone's so lucky.

Increasingly unpredictable weather events have brought a coverage crisis to California. For some premiums are now simply unaffordable while for others insurers have been cancelling policies. I do have dishes. That's great. That's exactly what I need. Can you get me some water? Monet and his dog Harley are at an emergency shelter. He was staying with a friend when the house caught fire.

They became separated and he's now looking for him. Bailey, there you go. Look, it squeaks. You want it? him. As we talk a woman walks up and offers an open bag of chewy dog toys, an act of volunteer generosity of the kind we see repeated here time and again. Well I rescue dogs and I love animals and I think that people right now really rely on their pets for support and comfort. It's important to focus on them as well as all the human beings. While people struggle to get on with their lives, the fight against the fires continues.

The wind speed that first fuelled the blaze to such devastating effect has dropped off a little, but it's forecast to pick up again. John Sudworth reporting from Alta Dena. Well, the initial estimate for the total damage from the California wildfires has nearly tripled in just 24 hours. In its latest projection, the American weather news Service AccuWeather

says losses could amount to as much as a hundred and fifty billion dollars. In his report John mentioned that insurance is likely to be a big issue for many who've lost their homes. Garrett Gray from the property insurance solutions company CoreLogic says the fires have come at the worst possible time. California is already suffering from an insurability problem mostly due to wildfires like these. This is not an issue that's exclusive to California. So there are wildfires in other areas, but there's also other perils like hurricanes in Florida. We've got hail and tornado risks through the center of the country.

And so we're suffering from climate change, which is increasing the frequency and severity of these sort of losses. It's definitely frustrating as consumers to have a lack of insurability. However, it's not that carriers who are in the situation are trying to be bad actors. The problem is that the ability to price the policies in a way that makes it sustainable is very difficult at the moment. So there is a way to figure this out,

but it's gonna require a lot of different pieces of our industry, the insurance industry, the reconstruction industry, the reconstruction industry, the California Department of Insurance and others to come together to solve this really important challenge. Property insurance expert Garrett Gray. To Venezuela now where as we record this podcast, Nicolas Maduro is due to be sworn in as president for his third term after a disputed election last July, despite the opposition

candidate Edmundo Gonzalez being recognised as the real winner by other countries including the US and the EU. There was a violent clampdown on anti-government protesters in the aftermath of the election. The opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who had been barred from standing in the election, was forced into hiding. She reappeared on Thursday to lead demonstrations against Mr Maduro and was briefly detained. Mr Gonzalez, who has been living in exile, is currently visiting the Dominican Republic. In a speech at the presidential palace there, he called for recognition of his election victory. We are living in critical days where the global struggle for freedom

and democracy has its epicenter in Venezuela and the only way to respect our country's sovereignty is by recognizing the popular and sovereign mandate expressed on the 28th of July. Manolo de los Santos is a supporter of President Maduro's who's traveled from the US to Venezuela for the inauguration. I wouldn't deny that there are people who didn't vote for Maduro but the majority of people I saw on the street were visibly in favor of the current government of continuing Nicolas Maduro's presidency and were actively you know actually saw this

victory as a chance for peace in our country. Our South America correspondent, Ionia Wells says Mr Maduro will be doing all he can to ensure the protesters don't disrupt his third inauguration. Well, I think it's going to be quite a tightly controlled ceremony. As expected, he is going to be inaugurated despite the fact that there have been huge anti-government protests in the last 24 hours, despite the fact that he's not been recognised as the president-elect by a lot of countries overseas, whether that be the US, EU, UK,

but also even neighbouring countries like Brazil and Colombia, whose left-wing presidents do have historical links with the sort of political movement that Maduro inherited from his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, even they have said that they don't recognize the result of the election. But despite this, and despite the pressure that's been applied to his government by the international stage in terms of things like sanctions as well, he is still set to be inaugurated later today. Now it's a very tightly controlled event as I say, foreign media aren't allowed in. There is going to be some press there but I think essentially his speech will be televised in the country and it is expected to be highly highly militarized around the city today. There has been quite a

significant crackdown again on any kind of anti-government protest. There were quite big crowds that turned out yesterday in Caracas to demonstrate ahead of the inauguration, but there was a very, very high armed military and police presence on the streets too. And Maria Corina Machado, who is a real opposition figure, but she was barred from standing and that's why Edmundo Gonzalez took her place. She's been in hiding for much of the time since those elections because of fears for her safety but she did come out of hiding to join these protests. That's right it was a really big moment yesterday because as you say she hadn't really been seen in public since August. She had done some

interviews, she had still been posting for example, she had called people to go out into the streets yesterday to protest but she hadn't been seen because she's been in hiding until yesterday where she sort of stood in quite a sort of defiant image on top of what was essentially the top of a vehicle addressing crowds, addressing her supporters, lots of people out taking photographs with her supporting the opposition cause. Now her team say that when she was leaving that rally she she was, in their words, violently intercepted in the east of the city as part of her motorcycle convoy.

They say that she was then held for a period of time, forced to record some videos, but was eventually released. This is something that the Venezuelan government have denied, and they've called this a media distraction but it is quite significant that she decided to come out of hiding given that there is an arrest warrant against her Edmund González who was the opposition candidate in the election has said that he would return to Venezuela to in his words claim victory in sort of tying into this inauguration however he hasn't really outlined how and when and I think that would be a significant risk for him given there's also an arrest warrant for him and authorities have made it very clear he would be detained. Ione Wells. Now, how far would you go to try to retrieve something valuable that went missing?

One man from Wales has spent a decade attempting to recover Bitcoin, he says, could now be worth as much as a billion dollars. James Howes says the hard drive containing the bitcoin was accidentally thrown away by his then girlfriend, now perhaps unsurprisingly his ex-girlfriend. He's taken his local council to court to force it to let him search the landfill site where it's believed to be buried. him search the landfill site where it's believed to be buried. But a judge has halted his case, telling him he has no realistic prospect of ever succeeding. Stephanie Prentice reports. James Howells went from being one of the luckiest to least fortunate men in the tech space. He wasn't a Silicon Valley tech whiz. He was just a normal computer expert from Wales and he mined 8,000 Bitcoin back in 2009, a really early adopter, and he was just experimenting with cryptocurrency

when it wasn't valuable. A key that he needed to access those coins was stored on a hard drive in his office. And it was during a big clean out of that office, four years later, that it was bagged up and it was taken to a local rubbish dump. Now he spoke to the BBC back then from the site. I came down yesterday morning to find out what the process was. I thought that maybe the individual bags may have been sorted and that the actual drive itself may have been put aside into a computer waste bin. But when I arrived yesterday, they basically told me that anything that goes into the household scrap bin is compressed and buried. I just wish I could go back in time.

So he sounds pretty resigned to his fate then, but in the past decade, he's teamed up with lawyers and he's been back and forth with the local council trying to get permission to dig. Now in this new twist a judge has stopped his efforts saying he had no realistic prospect of ever succeeding if this case continued to trial. Now when this first happened it was called a multi-million dollar mistake and as the currency has boomed James Howells now says his wallet could be worth as much as one billion dollars. Mr Howells says he's got the right to search for his property. He's also tried to strike deals saying he'd split the fortune with the council. That's something the judge did shoot

down and the judge also said he accepted the council's argument that it owned the hard drive from the minute it entered the landfill site. Now Mr Howells has also tried to argue he can use new tech to hone in on a smaller amount of land to search. We have seen cases of people using new tech to find lost bitcoin. Just at the end of last year, a man who forgot a password and couldn't access it was trying to get three million dollars worth of bitcoin. He got a hacker that could get him in. But this is a piece of hardware buried in the ground for a decade. could get him in. But this is a piece of hardware buried in the ground for a decade could be an issue. Stephanie Prentiss.

Still to come on the Global News podcast. One of my dreams is to see Nigerian flag on the European tour and the PGA tour and build a generation of golfers from Nigeria in particular that will participate in the Olympics. The Nigerian football star who wants to get more Africans playing golf. For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party?

Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? I'm Una Chaplin, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Even before Israel's war with Hezbollah, Lebanon was already in a dire economic situation and faced years of political deadlock. But there is hope that the election of a new Lebanese president will bring some much needed stability. The new president, the former army chief Joseph Aoun, has promised to remove

all arms from non-state actors, an indication that he wants to further reduce the influence of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. The former Lebanese Interior Minister Ziad Baroud knows President Aoun well. He told James Kopnall what the new leader hopes to achieve. He knows the country very well. He knows the problems we're facing, the issues. And I believe that in his inaugural speech, he acknowledged that we must change the political performance in Lebanon. And he most importantly positioned himself as an impartial mediator between institutions, which is much needed in Lebanon, considering the

many problems between the parliament, the government, and political parties. He vowed to assert the monopoly of weapons in the hands of the state. This is something new. And the enforcement of international UN resolutions while highlighting the need for a comprehensive defense strategy to enable the country to deter further attacks. I think that his inaugural speech was full of pledges, full of hope for the Lebanese people seeing the new Lebanon, so to speak, an independent judiciary, fighting terrorism, money laundering.

And he pledged to call for parliamentary consultations that are mandatory in order to appoint a prime minister. And my info say that he will do so by coming Monday. So things potentially moving pretty fast then. On that point about the Lebanese state having a monopoly on weapons, doesn't that set the scene for what could be a really explosive face-off with Hezbollah? It could be if Hezbollah was not aware of the matter. I believe that before President

Joseph Aoun was elected, I wouldn't call them negotiations, but there were some talks with Speaker Berry, who represents to a large extent Hezbollah, and with members of parliament of Hezbollah. That's what we heard in the news even. So I don't think we're going confrontational. I believe that it would be a smooth way of saying that from now on, the monopoly of weapons should be in the hands of the state. It is an issue, definitely, but it shouldn't be confrontational as I believe.

That would be a fundamental change for Lebanon, would it not though? I think that all the Lebanese people approve the fact that we needed resistance to face the attacks on Lebanon, but I believe also that it's about time that the army be entitled to do this. We need to secure our borders. The international community is helping a lot. If friends of Lebanon want to help the country to get back on the international scene, I think it's something good.

Former Lebanese Interior Minister Siyad Baroud. The future of the hugely popular social media platform TikTok could be decided by the US Supreme Court soon. It's due to be banned in nine days under a federal law brought in under President Joe Biden, just a day before his successor, Donald Trump, is due to return to the White House. The US Justice Department argues that the current Chinese owners could use the app to spy on and politically manipulate Americans. But it rejects that claim and in a last-ditch effort to stop the ban going ahead, representatives from TikTok are making their case today to the Supreme Court

judges. And they have an ally in Mr. Trump, who has credited the platform with helping him to get re-elected. Our North America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali, is attending the hearing in Washington. This is an outgrowth of a law that was passed by Congress on a bipartisan basis, which called for the company to either divest,

meaning sell itself to a US buyer or face this ban. And the company dug in this entire time saying it's not going to sell. And so it is now on track to be banned. So we are awaiting arguments to be made in the Supreme Court from both sides. And you also have, in addition to TikTok and the US Department of Justice, content creators are joining with TikTok. Of course, all sides have filed briefs and you also have what are known as amicus briefs where folks like Donald Trump that aren't part of the case but want to have their voices

heard can file their perspectives. He has said that he likes TikTok. He thinks that it may have helped him win re-election because he was able to reach younger voters there, especially those under 30 are believed to use TikTok as their primary news source. And so he has filed this brief saying that he wants the Supreme Court to basically pause, press the pause button here, allow him to come into office the day after this ban is supposed

to take effect, he comes in on the 20th, and to let him try to find a political resolution. He's convinced that he can do that. He wants to, in his words, save TikTok. Lillie Jomali. Earlier in the podcast, we heard about one man's search for his missing Bitcoin wallet, thought to be worth a huge sum of money. But here's another panic-inducing scenario that might be more familiar – when your phone goes missing. A British consumer rights group deliberately left mobile phones behind on planes after flying on them to test whether airlines are any good at returning lost property. And as Paul Moss reports, the answer seems to be a resounding no. It was a simple stunt. A team working for the Consumers Association took flights on

different airlines and each time they deliberately left a mobile phone behind. Every phone had a message on the screen saying that it was lost and giving a number to call to return it. Nobody did call. But the team then found it difficult or impossible to find anyone from the airline who had helped them. All said they had outsourced lost property to other companies. EasyJet directed them to the arrival airport's lost property, but the airport said they didn't handle property left on planes. With British Airways, the team had activated the find my phone function

so they could see that the handset had a rather mysterious journey, ending up in a countryside cottage. Meanwhile, the phone left on a Ryanair flight from Malta to London found its way into the hands of an Italian airport employee. He did offer to courier it back in return for $60. In a statement, British Airways said it was nonsense to suggest they didn't care about lost property. While EasyJet insisted it had procedures in place to return it, Ryanair dismissed the exercise as a waste of time. Paul Moss. Now, what sport do you think of when you think of Africa? I'm guessing you would say football, but could golf one day be the word that springs to mind? The former footballer Peter Odemwingi made his name scoring goals in the English Premier League and was part of the Nigerian squad that won silver

at the 2008 Olympics. But now his passion is golf. He's qualified as a PGA professional and he wants to make golf as popular as football in Africa. BBC Sport Africa's Ian Williams went to play a few holes with him. For right! Golf is a tough game. That's why one of the sport's all-time greats, Ben Hogan, once said that the most important shot is the next one. Oh, by the way, that tee shot was me. This is Peter Odenwingi. The 43-year-old is a regular here at Aston Wood Golf Club near Birmingham. Dressed casually

in a blue golf jacket and white cap, the man walking what are today's soggy fairways won 56 caps and an Olympic silver medal for Nigeria and played for West Brom, Stoke and Cardiff in the Premier League. I love scoring goals, especially in the last minutes of the game and with golf it's like holding a pot on the 18th hole to win a tournament. So similarities between golf and football you would say? A lot of feel involved so sometimes the weight of the pass in football is as important as how hard you hit the pot. I genuinely fell in love with the game. I like a challenge as well. My competitive nature is fed and the good thing about golf is I

can play this for many years to come. You've learned other skills related to golf. Yeah, absolutely. It's like a degree in university, time management skills, communication skills, retail, taxation. Obviously the football career, 20 years nearly, not much studying, deadlines, do the essays. It was a great journey. The first thing I saw in your previous drive is ball position. So for the longest club in the bag, we want to hit the driver on the... As a PGA pro, Peter can now coach, which was handy for me.

You want to try what we call the magic triangle. Wow! I want to try what we call the magic triangle. Wow! Thankfully he has grander plans. As a former Olympian, he likes the idea of leading Nigerian golfers at the Games. The medal is very well respected back home. If I cannot play as a golfer, I can at least be in a team of a golfer who will play there. But for now I want to introduce people to the game and build a generation of golfers from Nigeria in particular

that will participate in the Olympics. What kind of benefits do you think that golf could bring to an African country like Nigeria? If we have more golf courses, there will be tourism. Kids can get scholarships in good countries, good schools in America. Can you give me the 7-9 please? Odan Wingi admits that accessibility is a barrier for many in Africa, but says he wants

to involve charities, businesses, state officials and the PGA in his plans. Hopefully an academy, a golf academy under my name and yeah, start kids playing from early age. One of my dreams is to see Nigerian flag on the European tour and the PGA tour. There is still a fair way to go before Africa's golf revolution begins, but Peter Odenwingi is a man with a lot of drive. So anything's possible. That report by Ian Williams. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Czarny Duhadroj-Torczymsimsker, the producer of Chantal Hartle, the editor

is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Julio. Until next time, goodbye. Delve into a world of secrets. The BBC's Global Investigations podcast, breaking major news stories around the world. A BBC investigation finds that Mohammed Al Fayed, former owner of Harrods, was accused of raping five members of staff. Mohammed Al Fayed was like an apex predator.

From the top of British society to the heart of global fashion brands. The former boss of clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch is accused of exploiting young men for sex. That world has in-up and spit out a lot of exploiting young men for sex. That world has eaten up and spit out a lot of young and attractive guys. Gripping Investigations, available to listen to now, with more coming soon. Search for World of Secrets wherever

you get your BBC podcasts. And click, follow, or subscribe so you never miss an episode.