{"id":373214,"date":"2025-04-02T08:35:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T06:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=373214"},"modified":"2025-04-02T08:35:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T06:35:19","slug":"role-of-climate-change-in-la-wildfires-not-statistically-significant-says-report-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=373214","title":{"rendered":"Role of Climate Change in LA Wildfires \u201cNot Statistically Significant\u201d, Says Report Author"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Chris Morrison<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change was a major factor behind the recent Los Angeles wildfires, reported Matt McGrath of the BBC last January. According to a \u2018scientific study\u2019 instantly produced by World Weather Attribution (WWA), the prevailing weather conditions were made about 35% more likely<\/a> due to humans using hydrocarbons. The WWA study, according to the trusting McGrath, is said to confirm this somewhat precise attribution of blame. Possibly the BBC and most of the mainstream that also parroted the WWA line might consider some corrective copy in the light of a devasting critique of the claims from the theoretical physicist, science writer and prominent youtuber Dr Sabine Hossenfelder. In a YouTube video broadcast here<\/a> that has gone viral on social media, she elicited an astonishing admission from one of the report\u2019s authors that, \u201cas you can see from the numbers, the changes in intensity and likelihood are unsurprisingly not statistically significant\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not statistically significant is exactly what Hossenfelder found since she noted that the figures supplied by the WWA were within a 95% statistical probability level. Her broadcast goes into detail about the numbers falling within the 95% level meaning that an alternative explanation is that climate change had no part to play in the LA fires. In fact Hossenfelder was so appalled by the work that she was inclined to be harsh in her conclusions. \u201cIt is so bad that I have sincere doubts that even the authors read it\u201d, she says, adding it was so bad that \u201cit is actually quite funny\u201d. Wondering why other scientists don\u2019t complain, she notes: \u201cWhenever there is some crap going around the media, they look away and keep their mouths shut\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the laughter has a touch of gallows humour since Hossenfelder is concerned about matters of public policy arising from such widespread fearmongering. Wildfires affect the lives of millions of people and the claims of the WWA broadcast worldwide by unquestioning activists are policy relevant numbers, she observes. People in LA need to consider their response to the recent tragedy and judge whether it will happen more frequently in the future, she says, observing: \u201cThis research matters for people\u2019s lives.\u201d Of course, similar observations can be made about all the other mainstream pseudoscience babble designed to deliberately induce mass climate psychosis and promote the collectivist Net Zero fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lost in all the mainstream narrative-driven madness was any report about the recent sensational scientific finding that wildfires across the United States and Canada were occurring\u00a0at a rate of only 23%<\/a>\u00a0of that expected from a review of the tree ring fire scar record going back to the 17th century. The findings published in\u00a0Nature Communications\u00a0<\/em>effectively blew the politicised wildfire climate change scam out of the water. It was noted that a current\u201d widespread fire deficit\u201d persisted across a range\u00a0of forest types, and the areas burned in the recent past \u201care not unprecedented\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such was the alarm created by these inconvenient findings that one pre-publication reviewer noted: \u201cI see this paper as potentially being used by deniers of climate change impacts.\u201d Advice was given to rephrase \u201cto put even more emphasis on impact rather than burned area\u201d. In other words, concentrate on emotion rather than facts to help produce the Ultra Processed Message that is slowly but surely destroying faith in both climate science and the useful idiot media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular readers will of course be familiar with the activities of World Weather Attribution. Part founded by Green Blob-funded Climate Central<\/a>, which specialises in publication-ready catastrophic climate copy, it is run out of Imperial College in London where it is part of the green billionaire-funded Grantham Institute. It is run by the frequent BBC broadcaster Dr Friederike Otto and has a number of international partners including the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the Red Cross Crescent Climate Centre. It aims to make a near-instant assessment<\/a> as to whether an extreme weather event is made worse by humans burning hydrocarbons. It does this by using computer models to compare the results of two imaginary climates operating with different levels of carbon dioxide. Such an approach, using models to pick out individual events in a chaotic atmosphere full of little understood influences, has its critics. The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. calls it weather attribution alchemy<\/a>. He argues that the extreme position of attributing individual bad weather events is \u201croughly aligned\u201d with the far Left. For her part, Otto states that event attribution was originally suggested with the courts in mind. The main function of these studies is to support lawfare against hydrocarbon companies, and she explains this strategy in some detail in the interview \u2018From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BBC is clearly a fan. Former Radio 4 editor Sarah Sands wrote the foreword to a WWA guide for journalists claiming the attribution studies have given us \u201csignificant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse<\/a>\u201d. Pielke is less gushing, noting a \u201cless charitable explanation is that there is a systematic effort underway to contest and undermine actual climate science, including the assessments of the IPCC, in order to present a picture of reality that is simply false in support of climate advocacy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timed to make next day headlines, WWA weather attributions are not peer-reviewed. However the studies follow established methods which it is claimed have been \u201cpeer-reviewed and assessed as scientifically reliable<\/a>\u201d. How comforting to discover that the peer-review claim links to a paper<\/a> written by none other than Dr Otto along with numerous authors from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the Red Cross Crescent Climate Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Morrison is the<\/em> Daily Sceptic\u2019s<\/em> Environment Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate change was a major factor behind the recent Los Angeles wildfires, reported Matt McGrath of the BBC last January. According to a \u2018scientific study\u2019 instantly produced by World Weather Attribution (WWA), the prevailing weather conditions were made about\u00a035% more likely\u00a0due to humans using hydrocarbons. The WWA study, according to the trusting\u00a0McGrath, is said to confirm this somewhat precise attribution of blame. Possibly the BBC and most of the mainstream that also parroted the WWA line might consider some corrective copy in the light of a devasting critique of the claims from the theoretical physicist, science writer and prominent youtuber Dr Sabine Hossenfelder. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":373216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818389,691819134,691818056,691818153,691832954,691833233,691822002,691832558,691834208,691834206],"class_list":["post-373214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bbc","tag-climate-alarmism","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-models","tag-dr-friederike-otto","tag-dr-sabine-hossenfelder","tag-green-blob","tag-los-angeles-wildfires","tag-roger-pielke-jr-2","tag-world-weather-attribution-wwa","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0Screenshot-2025-04-01-005827.jpeg?fit=1396%2C739&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1z5A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":400049,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400049","url_meta":{"origin":373214,"position":0},"title":"Stop Promoting Attribution Studies, Associated Press, Europe\u2019s Wildfires Aren\u2019t Worsening","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/04\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Associated Press (AP), via ABC News, claims that climate change is responsible for the intensity of European wildfires in a story titled \u201cClimate change made deadly wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus more fierce, study finds.\u201d This is false. Data show no long-term trend of increasing wildfires in any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ABC News\"","block_context":{"text":"ABC News","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=abc-news"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQNLWjyzyIRjwRxNTTwUCKzV-jH2Wx1_cypEypPdW6K5e8Pt74kqyUEdP5mO2iwW6KNOKJKUiFuyc5dVy0dTObfYu50FivLLeZE_rco4C96GbggUwAg93k2vac1mBr1ldB9uFH4CJTBO6siuI2KHcepZPpM5-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQNLWjyzyIRjwRxNTTwUCKzV-jH2Wx1_cypEypPdW6K5e8Pt74kqyUEdP5mO2iwW6KNOKJKUiFuyc5dVy0dTObfYu50FivLLeZE_rco4C96GbggUwAg93k2vac1mBr1ldB9uFH4CJTBO6siuI2KHcepZPpM5-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQNLWjyzyIRjwRxNTTwUCKzV-jH2Wx1_cypEypPdW6K5e8Pt74kqyUEdP5mO2iwW6KNOKJKUiFuyc5dVy0dTObfYu50FivLLeZE_rco4C96GbggUwAg93k2vac1mBr1ldB9uFH4CJTBO6siuI2KHcepZPpM5-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQNLWjyzyIRjwRxNTTwUCKzV-jH2Wx1_cypEypPdW6K5e8Pt74kqyUEdP5mO2iwW6KNOKJKUiFuyc5dVy0dTObfYu50FivLLeZE_rco4C96GbggUwAg93k2vac1mBr1ldB9uFH4CJTBO6siuI2KHcepZPpM5-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQNLWjyzyIRjwRxNTTwUCKzV-jH2Wx1_cypEypPdW6K5e8Pt74kqyUEdP5mO2iwW6KNOKJKUiFuyc5dVy0dTObfYu50FivLLeZE_rco4C96GbggUwAg93k2vac1mBr1ldB9uFH4CJTBO6siuI2KHcepZPpM5-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":326546,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=326546","url_meta":{"origin":373214,"position":1},"title":"The BBC Promotes Bad Science About Heat, Floods, Drought, and Wildfires","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/06\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent BBC article, titled \u201cHow climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and floods,\u201d claims that climate change is linked to four types of extreme weather, specifically claiming it causes: extreme rainfall, worse heatwaves, longer droughts, and more wildfires. Widely available data proves these claims are false. The \u201cevidence\u201d given\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bad Science\"","block_context":{"text":"Bad Science","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bad-science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0190215162253-climate-change-explainer-super-tease.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0190215162253-climate-change-explainer-super-tease.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0190215162253-climate-change-explainer-super-tease.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0190215162253-climate-change-explainer-super-tease.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0190215162253-climate-change-explainer-super-tease.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":325139,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=325139","url_meta":{"origin":373214,"position":2},"title":"Mainstream Media Falls for Weather Attribution Con Again Over Dubai\u2019s Flooding","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/01\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A few media outlets, including CNN and BBC, have run recent articles talking about flooding in Dubai, claiming that climate change made the storms worse. This is false. There is no evidence that climate change made the rain more extreme, instead, evidence actually indicates that El Ni\u00f1o and even cloud\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0dubai-1351569_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0dubai-1351569_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0dubai-1351569_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0dubai-1351569_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0dubai-1351569_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":346207,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=346207","url_meta":{"origin":373214,"position":3},"title":"Climate Activists Frustrated by IPCC\u2019s Refusal to Link Extreme Weather With Carbon Emissions","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"10\/10\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Last June, the state-reliant BBC reported that human-caused climate change had made U.S. and Mexico heatwaves \u201c35 times more likely\u201d. Nothing out of the ordinary here in mainstream media with everyone from climate comedy turn \u2018Jim\u2019 Dale to UN chief Antonio \u2018Boiling\u2019 Guterres making these types of bizarre attributions.","rel":"","context":"In \"Attribution studies\"","block_context":{"text":"Attribution studies","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=attribution-studies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0PVHTHRCMLVH73EK45U6M6IVDKE.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0PVHTHRCMLVH73EK45U6M6IVDKE.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0PVHTHRCMLVH73EK45U6M6IVDKE.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0PVHTHRCMLVH73EK45U6M6IVDKE.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0PVHTHRCMLVH73EK45U6M6IVDKE.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":374981,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=374981","url_meta":{"origin":373214,"position":4},"title":"BBC & Weather Attribution\u00a0Models","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"04\/13\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I complained at the time that the WWA claims were presented as \u201cfactual\u201d, rather than output from computer models. Furthermore, the actual historical data showed the WWA claims to be false.","rel":"","context":"In \"BBC\"","block_context":{"text":"BBC","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bbc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/049596879723_02c2935635_k.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/049596879723_02c2935635_k.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/049596879723_02c2935635_k.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/049596879723_02c2935635_k.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/049596879723_02c2935635_k.jpg?fit=1200%2C857&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":434626,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=434626","url_meta":{"origin":373214,"position":5},"title":"No, Associated Press, This Southwest Heatwave Was Not \u2018Virtually Impossible\u2019 Without Climate Change","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"03\/27\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent Associated Press (AP) story titled \u201cRecords shattered as summer heat hits Southwest in March; \u2018This is what climate change looks like\u2019\u201d claims the recent Southwest heatwave is the latest proof that climate change is driving \u201cultra extremes.\u201d This is highly misleading and unsupported by real-world data. 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