Wildfires Burn on Both US Coasts

Facts

• Wildfires are raging on the East Coast and West Coast of the US, including 21K acres of land burned from the Mountain Fire in Ventura County, Calif., and 3K acres of land from the Jennings Creek Wildfire in Passaic County, New Jersey.^[1]
• Alongside the Jennings Creek Fire, which is currently 10% contained, fires are also burning in Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. There have been over 100 brush fires in New York City this month.^[2]
• The New Jersey fire was blown into New York's Orange County, which led to air quality advisories put in place in New York City and the Hudson Valley. An 18-year-old New York park employee was killed after a tree fell on him while he was clearing brush to fight a fire.^[3]
• After New York City reportedly endured its driest October in the city's history, the New York metropolitan region was still only expected to receive a quarter- to half-an-inch of rain by Monday.^[3][4]
• Across the Northeast, hundreds of fires have ignited this autumn, with the current ones at various stages of containment. In California, the Mountain Fire has resulted in thousands of evacuations, and over 100 structures have been destroyed.^[3][4]
• According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, 43.4% of the US and Puerto Rico and 51.89% of the lower 48 states are in drought as of Nov. 5, including 318.6M acres of crops.^[5]

Sources: ^[1]NBC, ^[2]Axios, ^[3]The New York Times, ^[4]NewsNation and ^[5]Drought.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by The Nature Conservancy. This is the fault of climate change. Carbon emissions are leading to hotter and drier climates, leading to larger fires that release more carbon into the atmosphere. Not only are millions of acres of coastal land burning but toxic smoke is being emitted. Americans don't even have to read climate literature to see and smell the effects of climate change.
• Narrative B, as provided by The Free Press and Substack. Climate change's role in wildfires is exaggerated, often at the expense of other crucial factors — including human-caused ignitions and poor forest management. This distortion stems from twisted criteria in academic publishing that favor politicized discourse over truth, leading false narratives about climate impacts to hinder the development of practical solutions.