The Associated Press’ latest article on the wildfires raging in the West failed to mention the impact of climate change in the ongoing disaster.
Most unfortunately, the article, “Wildfires rage as US West grapples with heat wave, drought,” seems to grasp the pieces of what is going on with extreme weather events, but it fails to put them together for the total climate picture: “The blazes come as the West is in the midst of a second extreme heat wave within just a few weeks and as the entire region is suffering from one of the worst droughts in recent history.”
Another AP article, Sunday’s “California wildfire advances as heat wave blankets US West,” catalogued a number of record or near-record temperatures in the region but still failed to mention the connection to climate change.
By contrast, scientific studies have documented that climate change is making wildfires bigger and more damaging and that the problem has been going on for decades.
One media outlet getting it right is the Los Angeles Times, which ran an article Monday with a headline bluntly explaining, “California hit by record-breaking fire destruction: ‘Climate change is real, it’s bad.’”
The article explained: “One thing everyone agrees on is that climate change is a factor that cannot be ignored.”