Science connects climate change and wildfires. Why won’t the media?

One of the least controversial impacts of the climate crisis is more frequent, severe, and damaging wildfires in America’s West. Why won’t reporters say so?

It’s been a scary spring for wildfires in places like Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Global warming caused by human-made carbon pollution is fueling perfect conditions, with longer fire seasons, drier conditions, and more lightning strikes.

But a search of Google News over the last week shows few reporters are connecting the dots for their readers. I did a search for stories that mentioned both wildfires and climate or global warming. I found very few stories in mainstream news outlets that mentioned climate and wildfires together at all, and the ones that did were just as likely to wrongly downplay the connection as correctly draw the scientifically documented tie

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