Right-wing media personalities are using the arrest of a man charged with igniting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles — a blaze that killed a dozen people and destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in January — to deny climate change. For example, Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that the finding that arson started the Palisades Fire “put the final nail in the climate change coffin.” As the Palisades fire and the nearby Eaton fire were raging in LA, many right-wing media figures attacked those who were connecting the intensity of the blaze to climate change. The arson charge is now serving as a baffling “gotcha” moment for right-wing media figures who are misrepresenting the scientific finding that climate change contributes to, not causes, wildfires. By attacking a claim no one is making these figures advance their campaign to undermine climate science and decouple the impacts of increasingly destructive extreme weather events from our warming planet.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/55300617

Right-wing media personalities are using the arrest of a man charged with igniting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles — a blaze that killed a dozen people and destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in January — to deny climate change.

For example, Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that the finding that arson started the Palisades Fire “put the final nail in the climate change coffin.”

As the Palisades fire and the nearby Eaton fire were raging in LA, many right-wing media figures attacked those who were connecting the intensity of the blaze to climate change. The arson charge is now serving as a baffling “gotcha” moment for right-wing media figures who are misrepresenting the scientific finding that climate change contributes to, not causes, wildfires.

By attacking a claim no one is making these figures advance their campaign to undermine climate science and decouple the impacts of increasingly destructive extreme weather events from our warming planet.