Despite Data Showing Wildfires Declining, NYT Pushes False Climate Fire Claims

The New York Times (NYT), in its article “Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World’s Forests,” claims that “forest fires are on the rise globally,” saying: “…an increase in severe fire weather is largely responsible.” [emphasis, links added]

This claim, one that the NYT has made and Climate Realism has debunked multiple times in the past, remains as false now as it was when the paper previously asserted it.

Data clearly show that rather than increasing in frequency and size, recent wildfire activity has actually declined in recent years, and is now below average, both globally and in the United States.

In addition, humans—rather than climate—remain the primary cause of most wildfires.

Consider this particularly striking passage from the article: “It really puts to bed any debate about the role of climate change in driving these extreme fires,” claims Dr. Cunningham, a quoted fire geographer, with the implication that all skeptics of climate-driven fire apocalypses should simply pack up and go home.

Let’s begin with the facts on the ground—literally.

According to InvestigateWest, the current wildfire season in the Western United States is off to a notably slow start.

Arizona, for example, has experienced “a little more than half the average” number of fires for this point in the season, with several other states likely to see “below normal levels of fires for July, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.” This is hardly the “unrelenting” era of infernos that the NYT would have us believe.

Zooming out to the global perspective, NASA satellite data show that the area of land burned by wildfires has decreased over recent decades.

Climate at a Glance – Global Wildfires “reports that satellite measurements since the early 2000s show a substantial decline in the area burned by fire worldwide,” with a downward trend of about 25 percent over the last two decades.

In the United States, the same pattern holds: Climate at a Glance – U.S. Wildfires notes that despite some high-profile fire years (often due to a handful of large, poorly managed events), the long-term trend in both the number and area of fires is down from the early 20th century and even from the late 20th century average.

Don’t believe NASA? The European Space Agency has also recorded a decline in area lost to wildfires over the past few decades.

The NYT attempts to rescue its narrative by focusing not on all wildfires, but specifically on those that occur in forests, and most conveniently, in remote locations. Their reasoning? If fires happen where humans aren’t around, they must be the fault of “climate.”

This is a classic case of cherry-picking: ignore the overall downward trend, then highlight one specific sliver of data that appears to fit the crisis narrative. But even here, the evidence is shaky at best.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – hardly a hotbed of climate skepticism – states clearly in Chapter 12 of its Sixth Assessment Report that there is no observable increase in fire weather attributable to climate change, either in the present or the future.

To quote: “There is low confidence in any long-term increases in meteorological drought or fire weather at the global scale.”

In other words, the IPCC itself does not support the NYT’s confident assertions. See the table below from the IPCC report with Fire Weather highlighted in yellow:

It’s also worth repeating that the overwhelming majority of wildfires are started by human activity—campfires, power lines, arson, and accidents—rather than some unstoppable “climate” force.

As reported by the U.S. National Park Service, approximately 85 percent of U.S. wildfires are human-caused, with lightning as the second most common source. Blaming climate for the consequences of land management failures and human carelessness is not just unscientific, it is dangerously misleading.

Even the NYT admits, in a rare moment of candor buried in the second page, that “globally, the area of land burned by wildfires has decreased in recent decades, mostly because humans are transforming savannas and grasslands into less flammable landscapes.”

This point undermines their headline thesis and is quickly brushed aside to return to the preferred narrative.

Let’s look at the data in context. Yes, there are years when fires in specific locations spike due to weather patterns, droughts, or management decisions. The catastrophic 2023–2024 Canadian fire season, referenced repeatedly by the NYT, was notable but not without precedent.

Historical records from North America, Australia, and other fire-prone regions show that megafires have occurred for millennia, long before industrial CO2 emissions.

What’s changed is our collective memory (and the media’s willingness to amplify each event as “unprecedented”) and, as ironically reported by the NYT, the growing number of people building in fire-prone regions.

The historical record, as cataloged in multiple scientific sources, shows that in the past, before climate change was a household phrase, much more land was burned annually than today.

Meanwhile, the “fire weather” metrics cited in these studies are often based on highly questionable modeling, which assumes a linear relationship between modest warming and exponentially greater fire risk.

Yet, as anyone familiar with fire science knows, fire behavior is determined by a complex interplay of fuel, ignition, weather, and management. The most crucial factor—fuel accumulation due to decades of fire suppression and poor land management—is rarely given its due.

If you suppress fires for too long, fuel builds up. When a fire finally breaks out, it’s much more intense. This is a problem of policy, not the climate.

As for the claim that “fire weather” is now twice as likely as in the preindustrial era, this is based on climate models tuned to produce crisis headlines rather than actual physical measurements.

Even within the article, the authors concede that “many studies that attribute climate change to fires are regional, not global.” Translation: Real-world global data do not support the alarmist claims.

To sum up: the reality of wildfire trends is far less dire than the NYT —and its favored climate researchers—would have readers believe. The facts are plain:

• Wildfire seasons in 2025 are off to a slow start and are well below average in much of the Western United States.
• Satellite data show a decline in burned area both globally and in the U.S. in recent decades.
• The IPCC does not attribute any measurable global increase in fire weather to climate change.
• Human activity remains the dominant cause of wildfires, not climate.

The next time you see a headline like “Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World’s Forests,” remember, recognize it for what it is: a lie told to promote economic and political change.

Real science is skeptical, fact-based, and honest about uncertainty—not a vehicle for stoking panic. If only the same could be said for The New York Times reporting.

Top image via US Forest Service via Flickr

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