Droughts Worsening Wildfires on US Coasts
The Facts
Wildfares are raging on the east and west coasts of the US, including 21K acres (31 sq miles) of land burned from the Mountain Fire in Ventura County, Calif., and 3K acres (4.6 sq miles) of land from the Jennings Creek Wildfire in Passaic County, New Jersey.
Alongside the Jennings Creek Fire, which is currently 10% contained, fires are also burning in New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, with over 100 brush fires in NYC this month.
The Spin
Global warming is creating a cycle of disaster. First, carbon emissions lead to hotter and dryer climates, which lead to larger fires across the country, and those fires release more carbon into the atmosphere. Not only are they burning down millions of acres of coastal land, but they're emitting more amounts of toxic smoke that Americans are forced to breathe in. Americans don't even have to read climate literature to see and smell the effects of climate change.
The role of climate change in wildfires is exaggerated, often at the expense of other crucial factors like human-caused ignitions and poor forest management. This distortion stems from twisted criteria in academic publishing that favor politicized discourse over truth, leading false narratives about climate impacts to hinder the development of practical solutions. The so-called scientific community has been hijacked by political movements with no care for real research.
