The Wisconsin Examiner in “Wildfire smoke blankets Wisconsin; advocates stress need to confront climate change” and the Investigative Post in “Why smoke is getting in your eyes,” both claim the current wildfires in Canadian and the smoke they are sending to the United States are due to climate change. These claims are false, and the articles misleading. While smoke from wildfires is real and the potential health impacts merit attention, there is no evidence that this particular wildfire season is due to climate change or that climate change is making wildfires worse. Instead, the articles ignore both the historical record and the broad scientific evidence, relying instead on advocacy-group talking points to make a connection between wildfires, drifting smoke, and climate change.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s article is especially revealing. After describing the smoke and its health impacts, it quickly pivots to quotes from environmental advocacy organizations such as Clean Wisconsin and Midwest Environmental Advocates, both of which insist that climate change is making wildfires more frequent or severe.
“Increasingly smoky skies underscore the importance of a rapid transition to clean energy rather than building more polluting fossil fuel infrastructure that further contributes to climate change,” Dr. Paul Matthewson, science program director for Clean Wisconsin, said in a statement.
“The wildfire smoke blanketing Wisconsin is a reminder that climate change is not a distant threat,” said Peg Shaeffer, spokesperson for Midwest Environmental Advocates.
These claims are presented as though they describe established fact, grounded in real-world data. They don’t. Indeed, its is misdirection since wildfires and the smoke they produce have nothing whatsoever to due with emissions from power plants or automobiles.
The smoke blanketing parts of the Midwest originated from lightning-caused fires in northern Minnesota and Canada. Smoke travels wherever the wind takes it. That is a feature of prevailing meteorological conditions, not evidence that greenhouse gases caused the fires in the first place. The media has increasingly adopted a simple formula: wildfire equals climate change.
Unfortunately, for their claims, nature is far more complicated.
The first graph, showing accumulated wildfire data for this and previous years, from climate scientist Bjorn Lomborg, Ph.D, tells an interesting story that readers did not see in either publication.
The data shows that thus far 2026 has experienced the lowest cumulative burned area across the Americas in at least the past decade. Oddly, the remarkably quiet 2026 fire season is not making headlines, but the smoke from the fires that are burning is being blamed on climate change.
In fact, it just isn’t the Americas experiencing this lower than normal for the 2026 fire season, as Lomborg reveals, it is the entire world, as is displayed in the second figure below.
Every continent is below average, and Africa, Americas, and Europe are at record lows for the date. With the media only showing areas that are burning, it leaves readers badly misinformed. The stories imply that wildfire seasons are getting worse, but the opposite is actually true.
The longer historical record is even more damaging to the “climate change is causing worse wildfires” narrative.
The third figure, seen below, is based on data published by the Royal Society from more than 800 fire-scar sites across western North America. It shows that large wildfires were substantially more common before about 1900 than they have been during the modern era. Fire frequency declined dramatically with European settlement, livestock grazing, organized fire suppression, and changes in land management.
populations, and subsequently organized and mechanized fire fighting by government agencies.
In other words, today’s forests are not burning at historically unprecedented levels. Quite the opposite. Much of North America experienced more frequent fire activity centuries before increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions became an issue.
That conclusion is consistent with the broader scientific literature.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in its Sixth Assessment Report that there is low confidence in global trends of fire weather and burned area, and the report does not conclude that climate change has produced a worldwide increase in wildfire occurrence.
Climate at a Glance reaches the same conclusion for the United States. The data show no long-term increase in U.S. wildfire trends once the full historical record is considered. The apparent increase often cited by media outlets begins in the early 1980s only because earlier federal fire records were excluded. When the longer record is examined, today’s fire activity falls well within historical experience. Neither article mentions any of this.
Instead, readers are treated to emotionally charged photographs of smoke-filled skies followed by quotes asserting that climate change is responsible. That may make for compelling advocacy, but it is poor science, and even poorer journalism.
Wildfires occur because several factors come together at the same time.
Weather and wind matters. Ignition sources (lightning, accidental, or arson) matter, and forest management, insect infestations, and decades of aggressive fire suppression matter, because they have all resulted in a large increase in fuel load, allowing forests to become unnaturally dense.
These factors are all contributors to wildfire ignition, spread, and severity.
Reducing every wildfire to “climate change” ignores nearly the variables that actually determine how and where a fire starts, how intensely it burns, and whether it spreads.
Ironically, these two articles focus on the smoke rather than fire.
Smoke is a function of atmospheric transport. A season with relatively modest burned area can still produce severe smoke episodes if prevailing winds carry the plume toward major population centers. Conversely, enormous fires burning in remote regions may generate little public attention if the smoke disperses or the fire goes out before reaching a population center.
Smoke over Wisconsin tells us where the wind blew, it does not tell us why the fire started.
The public deserves better than this increasingly predictable pattern of reporting. Every wildfire season now follows the same script: smoke appears, advocacy groups are quoted, climate change is declared the culprit, and facts and historical evidence are nowhere in evidence.
The real story isn’t that smoke drifted hundreds of miles from Canadian wildfires. Wildfire smoke commonly does that and has throughout history, as was discussed at Climate Realism previously, here and here, for example. The real story is that despite one of the lowest cumulative burned-area totals across America in more than a decade, portions of the media still insist on treating every smoky sky as proof of climate catastrophe.
That isn’t honest journalism, it is advocacy disguised as news coverage.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
Could it be that this year, the wind patterns are somewhat different, so more smoke is being blown over the northern states of the USA ??
We know the jet stream has been rather wobbly of late.. causing hot and cold pockets around the NH.
This was written: Could it be, that this year, the wind patterns are somewhat different? Duh, we have already been told the wind patterns are different, the Jet Stream has a path that is different.
The weather changes, within certain parameters.
This summer looks like a typical summer to me. Summers don’t have the exact same weather every year, but they don’t vary much, either.
Could be, the jetstream tends to tongue downward (not continent wide).
“ Smoke is a function of atmospheric transport. ”
Sometimes the transport brings the smoke near ground level where it bothers people – – some people have serious issues.
Sometimes the smoke stays high, can’t be smelled, and people think the end of the world is at hand. Such happened in 1950 with The Great Smoke Pall” from the Chinchaga fire {Wikipedia has an entry : “The Chinchaga fire produced large amounts of smoke, creating the “Great Smoke Pall”, observed across eastern North America and Europe.}
In western Pennsylvania we watched the darkness cover the Sun, it turning orange/red and then dissappered. A few days later the Pittsburgh Press got the story out. Modern communications are now immediate.
The way they use words like “confront climate change”, or “address climate change”, or “tackle climate change”, is so much gibberish. It is always liberals writing such things. Great that Trump is tearing down their play houses.
Yes. They’re the most idiotic phrases imaginable. And does anyone tell us what it will look like when “Climate Change” is defeated?
When you see “advocates stress need” you know the fix is in, because that’s what advocates do.
Duh.
Climate change, like climate, like Global Average Temperature, etc., etc., as statistical constructions. Statistics causes nothing.
Well, who would have thought that…
From Tamino.
I bet there were hardly any fires when it was under a mile of ice.
Who would have thought that if you prevent fires for multiple years, if you prevent removing dead vegetation for multiple years, you would eventually have a worse fire that was caused by the preventive measures you refused to accomplish.
Start in 1850.
Let’s look back in time
1825 Fire Burned 2.5 Million Acres Of Canada In Nine Hours | Real Climate Science
Southern Canada.. you mean where all the URBAN DEVELOPMENT has been. !
And was warmer 1000 years ago
I’ve no idea what “southern Canada” means in that temperature anomaly chart.
Interesting, the early exploration of Canada by Europeans was via the Saint Lawrence River. The act of going “up-river”, the Lachine Rapids and the famous Falls contributed to labeling the southern-most part of Canada as “Upper Canada“. From Montreal to Toronto is about 200 feet elevation gain.
😎
I used to wonder why Upper Sandusky in Ohio was south of Sandusky.
The I realized both cities were on the Sandusky River which flows north into Lake Erie.
Since 1950, Canada’s population has grown approximately from 14.0 million to about 41.5 million.
Since people have nothing to do with fire . . . What? Oh! Never mind.
Interesting choice of time span.
The US anti-logging movement was getting started in the ’60s. And was codified in to successive laws in the ’70s, starting with the NEPA in 1970, then the ESA in ’73 (spotted owl anyone?), and NFMA in ’76.
Can’t log. Can’t manage forests, more underbrush, more deadwood. What could go wrong.
And invasive cheatgrass was well established in the Western US by 1910, and saw rapid expansion starting in about 1980.
But yep, it’s CO2 wot done it. Bless your heart.
And yes, I know it says “Canada”, but 51st state…
This whole stinking mess could be cleared up with two simple actions. Number one stop talking about climate change, it is a meaningless phrase. Instead insist that the discussion is about CO2. Number two demand that the other side prove with proper science that CO2 added to the atmosphere by man causes catastrophic runaway global warming. We all know they can’t prove that, therefore the issue is settled there is no crisis.
By blaming it all on “Climate Change” they don’t have to take action to address the real problem, mismanaged forest.
Hundreds of hectares are burning in France. Although saddened by this state of affairs, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the mayor of a town in the southwest state that forest maintenance was essential in order to protect forests from these terrible fires, without claiming that “catastrophic anthropogenic climate change” was responsible for the ignition of our woodlands. We also practice “reasoned mowing” so as not to disturb the wildlife that lives in the tall grass along roadsides. To what extent are these little creatures disturbed when their dried-out habitat catches fire because some complete idiot threw a cigarette out of his car window?…
Here, nine tenths of forest fires are caused by humans, intentionally or not (I believe that in the USA, it is something like 85 percent?)
In any case, the slightest offence during a period of drought should be punished with a substantial fine. The same should apply to throwing cigarette butts or packaging on city streets, on beaches, and to dog owners who fail to pick up their pets’ droppings and show little concern for respecting shared public spaces. I would have absolutely no objection to a €150 penalty being applied without exception in such cases. The world is not a rubbish bin.
Surprisingly even the UK Grauniad reported on 25th July that French Authorities had urged people to avoid barbecues saying that “nine out of ten fires started as a result of human activity”
Yes, it’s just common sense! There are so many purely anthropogenic factors that come well before “catastrophic climate change” when it comes to explaining these terrible wildfires: agricultural abandonment, land use, increasing urbanization, arsonists, appalling forest management, open-air dumps, the “selective mowing” approach I mentioned above, negligence and the tendency of some people to treat the environment like a dumping ground, pine monocultures, and, ironically, the complete suppression of low- and medium-intensity fires, which naturally reduce the amount of available fuel.
But it’s simpler to blame anthropogenic CO₂ emissions for causing wildfires. The connection is absurd, yet it forms almost automatically in the minds of people subjected to relentless media bombardment and the near-instantaneous flow of information. Try explaining the atmospheric mechanisms that lead to the formation of high-pressure systems, while pointing out that nothing demonstrates that greenhouse gases have increased the frequency of these phenomena, and you’ll be shouted down by the crowd before you’ve managed to get twenty words out.
I’d have thought it was closer to 99 times out of 100.
Climate has always changed, what if it is still changing, the probability that Climate has changed is approximately 99.9??? percent, the probability that Climate has not changed is approximately 00.00??? percent, the probability that CO2, a trace gas is the major factor in Climate Change is 00.000??? percent. From a pure scientific view, more CO2 would make green plants more healthy and would reduce fires, from a pure scientific view, less CO2 would kill green plants and provide more dry flammable fuel and would increase fires.
Small nit. More plants during a severe drought creates more fuel.
Otherwise, totally correct.
One of the considerations for wild fire is fuel load. Forest management practices will play a part in the accumulation of fuel laying around waiting for the moment to burn.
The point I would like to make is the increase in growth thanks to CO2 that has taken place over the past forty years, which NASA satellite images tell us has increased the green plant production worldwide by an area greater than the entire USA.
Now clearly, when that growth becomes fallen branches leaves etc and is added to the available fuel for fires it should show up as a proportional increase in fire activity.
That potential fire risk is nothing to do with climate change it is purely a natural uptick in fire fuel availability.
No doubt the climate alarmists will adopt this argument, wildfires are caused by the increase in CO2 and thus we should ban CO2 look out for the Guardian/BBC pushing this line in the coming months.
Has forest management changed over the past 60 years in synch with changes in forest changes?
I do not know the answer, but my hunch is the answer will be no, forest management has not adapted to forest changes. My answer is mostly based on the total hands off the environmental activists managed to get codified into law.
I asked a serious question and i got a downvote. I live in the U.K. not in either North American country so have no experience of comparable large forest areas. All I have is based on a fictional TV programme based in Canada from the early 1960’s!
What I have noticed here in the U.K. is a change in terminology, in the past fires in open moorland were usually referred to as grass or undergrowth fires, now they are called wildfires. What is not mentioned is that these fires cannot start spontaneously and require human intervention either accidentally or maliciously (natural causes like lightning are highly unlikely).
Someone posted a picture of an orange hazy sky with barely visible landscape and structures on Facebook, with the caption: “If you still think climate change is a hoax, congratulations: You are an idiot.” The Climate Liars are using the Canadian wildfires to full advantage. Because that’s how they roll.
This is precisely the type of article that the mainstream media avoids publishing, and there’s a strong suspicion that certain governments pressure them to make sure they don’t run them. Chances are also good that a variety of enviro-organizations make their donations to these outlet contingent on their amplifying any occurrence that can be equated to climate change. Canada’s CBC is a good example since it can hardly wait to attribute any weather/climate-related occurrence to excess carbon emissions. Ironically, just recently it took US Senator Patty Murray of Washington State to be quoted on the network to point out that the smoke drifting south from Canada has in the past originated in Montana, Idaho and Washington and was the result of lightning strikes, not poor forest management.
Trigger, consequences (results), and root cause.
Lightning strike is a trigger.
Smoke is a consequence.
Root cause? Fuel.
Something that burns that should not have been left out and left unattended.
The root cause is forestry mismanagement. Period.
Forestry mismanagement is the consequence of bad politics.
Bad politics is the consequence of environmental activism.
It is not that fires, extreme weather, etc. are increasing.
It is media driven public awareness that has been increasing.
Much like tropical hurricanes and tornadoes. We are detecting many that previously would have gone unobserved.
Thankyou.
Wisconsin is rather near NW Ontario, to the south. I say DUH to flappers.
(With some prevailing wind from west smoke will go into Michigan as well, can’t charge a toll. 😉
OTOH, sometimes winds come from east, such as:
eastern WA into western WA (Meteorological researcher Cliff Mass connects that to certain weather events)fine sand from the Sahara Desert is reaching the Caribbean at this time