Numbers of the year part 2

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Hello and thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast.

We're the program that looks at the numbers in the news and I'm Charlotte MacDonald.

Today we're lining up the fireworks to bring you more numbers of the year and this time they're your own picks.

We asked you to send in your standout numbers of 2024, the figures and stats that have caught your eye and which feel significant at this particular moment in time.

Let's start with our first number from Gary Henderson.

My number of the year is 1.62, which is the average number of degrees above the pre-industrial level globally on average over the past 12 months.

So, 1.62 degrees.

But isn't 1.5 degrees the figure we always hear as the threshold figure when reporting on climate change?

Here's Amanda Maycock, a professor in climate dynamics at the University of Leeds in the UK.

Now, in 2015, the governments of the world signed the Paris Agreement, which set up the targets to limit the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to one and a half degrees.

This year is the first year where we will have exceeded that one and a half degree threshold.

However, it's important to note that that target is referring to the long-term average temperature over many years rather than just the value in a single year.

So, we haven't breached the commitments from the Paris Agreement, at least not yet.

That 1.62 degrees figure that Gary spotted covers the period from November 2023 to October 2024.

It comes from a report released via the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

So, does this mean that we can expect a rise above 1.62 degrees next year?

Not necessarily.

So, we have a long-term increase in the temperature, and on top of that, we have these bumps and wiggles from year to year.

Now we know that this year has been particularly warm, partly because of a phenomenon known as the El Niño southern oscillation.

That's the weather pattern that causes water in the eastern Pacific to heat up more than normal.

But it's quite possible that next year the temperature will drop back down again a little bit if we don't have another El Niño event and the temperature will be a little bit below 1.5 degrees.

But these year to year wiggles are not the thing that the Paris Agreement are concerned with.

They're concerned with the long-term stable climate and the warming level of that.

However, as it stands, based on our current greenhouse gas emissions globally and what we expect to happen over the coming years to those emissions, it is looking likely that the one and a half degree target would be broken sometime in the early 2030s.

Is this year's specific temperature increase of 1.62 degrees something we should be aware of?

It is telling us that we're on this trajectory into a warmer climate that we've been on for many decades now.

So this should be a warning bell to us all that we need to up our action to try to mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions and to combat further climate change.

And there is a new year's resolution for us all.

On to our next listener's number of the year.

It comes to us from Emile Richman.

My number of the year is 1.7 billion, the number in 2054 that there will be people over 65, an incredible rise from the current 830 million.

Just over double the population of over 65s in about 30 years' time.

That is indeed an astonishing rise.

We called on someone who can help us make sense of it.

My name is Jennifer Dowd and I'm a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford.

Demographers study how to count people.

So where does this figure come from?

And how accurate is it?

This number comes from the most recent estimates from the UN, World Population Prospects.

I would say this number is quite reliable, mostly because the people who are over 65 in 2054 are already born, so we have quite a good idea of how many of them there are and have to make some assumptions about mortality.

Is this down to people simply living longer?

That's a misconception, says Jennifer.

It's actually what I would call a demographic echo of changes in fertility from the past.

So if you think about the size of the 65 and older population in 2054, it's a function of how many people were born, let's say, from 1954 to 1989, which I find scary because it means that Taylor Swift, famously born in 1989, will actually be 65 in 2054.

But it also means that in this sense, the demography of old age is already written.

So 1954 was still squarely in the baby boom when people on average were having four to five babies.

People are now having fewer children.

So the size of the population coming up behind the older generations will not be so large.

And it does mean that eventually population aging will run its course and age groups will be closer to the same size in the long run.

And while this population shift does bring plenty of challenges, Jennifer says it shouldn't cause panic.

It certainly is something that societies need to be prepared for because of increased public spending on pensions and medical care.

But I also think a lot of demographers would argue that we're a little over-scared of population aging.

You know, older people are living longer, but also healthier than they were in the past on average, still contributing a lot to society, spending their retirement savings.

And I am quite sure that a 65-year-old Taylor Swift will be contributing a lot to the economy.

And just imagine all the eras for Swifties between now and then.

Our final number comes from loyal listener, Matt Gin.

I've just read in the Times newspaper that 80% of German companies still use fax machines and a third use them regularly.

Can this really be true?

And is it the reason for their current economic concerns?

We've had Lizzie McNeil look into this.

Hello, Lizzie.

Hi, Charlotte.

Well, as usual, I started out by looking into the key component of the question.

You mean where the statistic came from?

No, what a fax machine is.

So fax machines, or facsimile machines, do what the name suggests.

They create a copy of a document.

So, like, basically a scanner or a photocopier, but the copy is printed out at the other end of a phone line.

Yeah, I mean, I think most people know that.

Oh, I mean, most older people.

Anyway, on to the statistics.

So, this number comes from a report published in 2023 by Bitcom, which is a digital association based in Germany that aims to digitise the German business sector.

This report found that 80% of businesses that they surveyed did still use fax machines, but in a newer report published by them in 2024, that number had fallen to 77%.

Do we have an idea of how much they use them?

I mean, because just because you have something doesn't actually mean you use it a lot.

I mean, I've I've got running shoes.

Right.

So they published another report in October of this year that said 17% of companies use them very often and thirteen percent of them say they use them often.

If we we look at the paper that the Times based their numbers off, then 40% use them often or very often.

So of the people who fax, less than half use them regularly, and again, that number's falling.

But why are people still using fax machines?

We have so many other options now.

Some companies claim it's to meet legal requirements.

Legal requirements?

Yeah, so this is a classic case of the law being slow to change.

For years in Germany and many other countries, emails weren't seen as sufficient or legal evidence in court.

Faxes are considered to hold the same value, legally speaking, as an original contract.

However, that's now changing, and the German government are amending the law to include emails and e-signatures as legal forms of text.

Okay, but what about listener Matt's question?

Does it damage their economy?

Well, Germany faces problems such as an aging population, the knock-on effects of COVID, global demand shifting from manufactured goods to services, but the International Monetary Fund also believes that productivity could be boosted by cutting red tape.

Many government services are also not digitised, so there's a problem.

But can we blame this all on the little facts machine?

Hmm.

I think they've become a symbol for clunky, sluggish bureaucracy rather than the root of it.

But Germany isn't the only country with a reliance on facts.

Japan is still a huge fan of the facts.

Thanks, Lizzy.

That's a wrap on last year's numbers, but we will soon be bringing in the new ones for 2025.

Thanks to all of our experts.

Until next week, goodbye.

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