Transcript of Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con

Deadly wildfires usher in 2025 in and around Los Angeles, while 2024 takes its official place as the hottest year on record.

For reasons scientists are still figuring out, I'm Scott Simon.

I'm Ayesha Rasco, and this is up first from NPR News. California governor Gavin Newsom says he wants to know why there's been loss of water supply and pressure as firefighters make scant progress against blazes that have claimed nearly 60 square miles.

New reports put a number on a warming planet and point to some, but not all, of likely culprits.

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The Palisades fire expanded significantly overnight, bringing new evacuation orders. There are also now dusk to dawn curfews in areas around the 2 biggest fires in Southern California.

And yesterday, the state's governor called for an independent investigation into why some fire hydrants have gone dry. NPR's Liz Baker has been covering the fires. Liz, thanks very much for being with us.

You're welcome, Scott.

How do things look right now?

Well, we're still in heightened fire weather again today according to the National Weather Service. They're warning that the risk is a little south of LA, especially today. Parts of Orange and Riverside counties, they're under red flag warnings. For a while here, yesterday Thursday, the winds calmed down a little bit, where the worst fires have been raging here in LA, especially at lower elevations. That windbreak has been welcome news.

Some evacuation zones were able to be lifted or downgraded. Some people were able to return to their homes. And firefighters did start to make some slight progress for the first time towards containment on the big fires and even more progress on some of the smaller ones. But, Scott, still, over a 150,000 people are under evacuation orders. And overnight, there was a flare up of the Palisades fire that led to even more evacuations, this time in the Brentwood area.

That fire over there, that's already the worst in Los Angeles history, overall these past few days have just been astonishingly destructive. Officials estimate over 10,000 structures destroyed. Here's a clip from Rich Snyder. He's a retired fire marshal who now works for a company that hardens homes. That means he prepares them to survive wildfires, but he told me the fires this week are the worst he's ever seen.

No community, no city, no state could be prepared for what Southern California went through. You know, we all growing up here about the great Chicago fire. This is going to be something that is gonna change history.

Liz, what's it look like on the ground?

Well, to answer that question, I'd actually like to stay with Rich Snyder for a minute because I met up with him last night in Pasadena. He was sitting outside his damaged home, which he personally saved from the Eaton fire using garden hoses and help from his nephews. And he showed me videos on his phone of what it was like. So scary. Just embers just pouring down like glowing rain, flames everywhere.

And he says that happened so fast. In just 20 minutes, the fire was on top of his house and he had to run out and start fighting it in his baseball cap and sweats. Scott, there's no doubt that those efforts saved not only his house, but at least 8 others on the block. Although he still says there was nothing he could do for 15 other homes. And he did actually rescue 1 of his neighbors across the street.

That man is neurodivergent. He couldn't understand what was going on and kept trying to get into his car to leave, but the car was already on fire with 15 foot flames shooting out of it. So a very, very, very dramatic evening for Snyder, and he has 30 years of experience as a firefighter. He said, though, fighting this 1 at home was a whole different ballgame and 1 he never could have fully prepared for.

You know, you'd get an assignment list if it was a street like this, and it would be, oh, 12 16's on fire. 110 2's on fire. It was like that. The difference being is it was Greg. It was Dave.

It was Julie. They weren't numbers.

Scott, you can hear in his voice. Snyder is really just starting to process what he went through this week. So are his wife, his nephews, his neighbors, a lot of people in LA, and they haven't been able to take a break. The Snyder's, they sit up all night and all day in front of their yard ready to douse any flare ups and deterle looters, and that's, you know, on top of everything else. It's just a lot to deal with.

Angelenos are used to some level of disruption for wildfires, but there's never been anything like this before.

NPR's Liz Baker, thanks so much for being with us.

You're welcome.

2024 was the hottest year ever recorded in human history. That's according to newly released reports, and it comes as the past 2 years have been even hotter than scientists expected.

Aleandra Borunda from NPR's climate desk joins us now to tell us what scientists think is happening. Thanks so much for being with us.

Yeah. Glad to be here.

Let's put some numbers on this extraordinary heat.

So the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and NASA just announced their official numbers on Friday. And they both say that 2024 was about 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than it was back in the 1800 before people started burning tons of fossil fuels. For reference, that's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And 1.5 c, you might have heard of it. It's kind of a symbolic number, because back in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, most countries tried to pledge to keep global warming to less than 2 c and ideally less than 1.5.

And I I wanna be clear that being past that number for just 1 year, that doesn't mean those goals are breached, but it's not a good sign.

But you said last year was actually hotter than scientists had anticipated?

Yeah. 2023 2024 were both off the charts hot. Here's how climate scientist Zeke Housefather described some of the temperature records from 2023.

Gobsmackingly bananas.

Very descriptive. And so the last 2 years, they were about 2 tenths of a degree Celsius hotter than scientists even expected. And that might not sound like a lot, but Hauswatfatha says it's equivalent to about a decade of global warming. And that really matters because it's important to know if this extra heat represents a permanent change to the climate or something else.

And why?

That is definitely the question. Scientists have looked at so many things. They looked at stuff like the solar cycle. That wasn't it. They looked at dust in the air.

That wasn't it either. And then there was this other idea about

no 1 thing could no 1 thing could be held responsible for those numbers. What else is on the suspect list?

So the next idea was El Nino, which is part of this natural climate cycle. And during El Nino years, the planet is generally warmer. But when it first got unexpectedly hot, El Nino hadn't even started yet. Gavin Schmidt is a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

It's hard to blame the El Nino for things that happened before the El Nino even really started.

It turns out that El Nino probably had some effect on 20 20 four's numbers, but overall, scientists were still scratching their heads.

And what did they find?

Yeah. They went to 1 other place, Scott. The next thing they looked at were these weird kinds of clouds.

These are the tracks of ships. It's like a contrail from an airplane, but from a ship over the ocean.

That's Andrew Gettleman. He's a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ships burn fossil fuels, and the pollution from that actually creates these cloud trails behind them that cool Earth. And in 2020, that ship fuel actually got cleaner, and that meant smaller ship track clouds and, in turn, a hotter planet. And that could actually make up about half of the mystery heat.

And scientists think decreases in other clouds that were also formerly caused by pollution might make up another chunk.

So let me understand this. Clearer skies, sunnier skies caused by less pollution ends up promoting climate change?

Yeah. It's not ideal. But scientists like Schmidt say that that just means cutting fossil fuel emissions is even more important to get at that main driver of climate change.

Aleandra Burunda of NPR's Climate Desk, thanks so much for being with us.

Yeah. Glad to be here. Thanks.

And finally, TikTok.

Its fate in the United States is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the video app argued before the court yesterday asking the justices to halt a law that could have the service banned in 8 days.

But the justice department says unless TikTok loses its Chinese owner, ByteDance, it must shut down in the United States. And here's Bobby Allen was in court for the arguments and joins us here in our studios. Bobby, thanks for being with us.

Morning, Scott.

What did TikTok say?

TikTok's legal team said allowing the federal government to shut down the app would defy precedent. They called TikTok the modern public square, and they said forcing it offline would suppress the speech of a 170,000,000 Americans who use the app, as well as the company's own protect expression, meaning when TikTok curates what people see on the app, that is actually a type of speech that would be suppressed by the ban. If the Supreme Court does not block the law, TikTok's lawyer said, Scott, the app will go dark next Sunday.

And how did the government respond to this free speech argument?

Yes. Solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar argued that Congress passed the TikTok divestor ban law as a way of addressing the app's national security problem. As long as data flows between Beijing and TikTok and as long as ByteDance controls TikTok's algorithm, she says Americans are just too exposed to the Chinese government. She argued that the problem isn't China's foreign ownership. The problem is the ownership is by an enemy of the United States that wants to spy on Americans and create havoc.

Here's prelogger.

For the the Chinese government to have this vast trove of incredibly sensitive data about them, I think, obviously, exposes our nation as a whole to a a risk of espionage and blackmail.

Yeah. In court, Prelogar said, I mean, think about it. Beijing has all of this information on millions of teenagers now, but, you know, maybe they don't wanna do anything with it now, but weaponize it later when some of these teens say, you know, take jobs with the government or maybe join the military.

Bobby, could you discern if the justices seem to be leaning 1 way or another?

Yeah. They had tough questions for both sides, Scott, but, you know, liberal and conservative justices were quite skeptical that, TikTok's free speech would be more important than an overseas security threat. Chief justice John Roberts said, congress had no problem with TikToker's free speech when lawmakers passed the law banning the app back in April. Roberts said the issue is and has always been ByteDance.

Congress is fine with the expression. They're not fine with a foreign adversary as they've determined it is, gathering all this information about the 170,000,000 people who use TikTok.

So, Bobby, the ban is supposed to go into effect in 8 days. What do you see between now and then?

Well, we're waiting on 2 things from the court. 1st, whether they will delay the law's January 19th start date, and secondly, whether the law will be upheld or struck down, so the merits. Now if the law is upheld, TikTok says its infrastructure will start to crumble, but the company is putting a lot of stock in president-elect Donald Trump. He has vowed to keep TikTok alive, and he actually will have a lot of latitude over TikTok's future. Even if the court backs the ban, he could tell his administration not to enforce it.

And if the law's upheld, any indication ByteDance, would sell TikTok?

Yeah. ByteDance has long maintained that TikTok is not for sale, and the US government knows this quite well. But solicitor general Pre Logger told the justices that maybe if the law does take effect, China will change its stance. Right? Maybe that will be the leverage China needs.

It will just jolt them into finally saying, okay. Finally, we will sell US TikTok over to a American company. But we don't know yet, Scott, so we shall see.

Time will tell. NPR's Bobby Allen. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Scott.

And that's up first for Saturday, January 11, 2025. I'm Ayesha Rasco.

And I'm Scott Simon.

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