Fox News co-host Greg Gutfeld attacked President Barack Obama for connecting wildfires to climate change. But scientists say climate change has increased fire risks in parts of the Western U.S. by promoting warmer and drier conditions, and the number of wildfire acres burned each year is on the rise.

In his second inaugural address, Obama called for action to avoid the destructive impacts of climate change, saying, “Some may deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.” On the January 29 edition of Fox News' The Five, Gutfeld criticized Obama for suggesting that wildfires were “somehow linked” to climate change, claiming that there were “a third fewer U.S. wildfires in 2012”:

Gutfeld's statistic came from a Washington Post column by George Will that compared the number of U.S. wildfires in 2012 to 2006 -- a year that saw the most wildfires since 1982. By cherry-picking data from that year, Will obscured the upward trend in acres burned from wildfires. In fact, the number of acres burned by wildfires in 2012 was the third-highest on record in the U.S., and the National Research Council states that “large and long-duration forest fires have increased fourfold over the past 30 years in the American West” as increased temperatures have dried soils and plants and boosted tree-killing beetles. While wildfires are influenced by numerous factors, the U.S. Global Change Research Program stated that “Wildfires in the United States are already increasing due to warming”:

Nevertheless, Fox News continues to “deny the overwhelming judgment of science,” as Obama put it, with Andrea Tantaros citing a non-peer-reviewed paper to dismiss the science behind global warming.