{"id":400049,"date":"2025-09-04T19:37:51","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T17:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400049"},"modified":"2025-09-04T19:37:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T17:37:53","slug":"stop-promoting-attribution-studies-associated-press-europes-wildfires-arent-worsening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400049","title":{"rendered":"Stop Promoting Attribution Studies, Associated Press, Europe\u2019s Wildfires Aren\u2019t Worsening"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"News<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>.\u201d This is false. Data show no long-term trend of increasing wildfires in any of the countries listed, and overall global wildfire data shows declining fire extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AP cites a non-peer reviewed report by World Weather Attribution (WWA) to claim that climate change was responsible for necessary conditions, specifically, hot and dry weather, which drove the widespread wildfire outbreaks in Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, and made them \u201cburn much more fiercely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story and the report it relies upon are suspect from the start. First, as discussed by Climate Realism<\/em><\/a> previously, as a matter of geography the climate of the Mediterranean region is naturally arid, prone to drought, extreme heat, and associated wildfires. Fire helped shape the ecology of the entire region. Some past fires have been huge. For instance, more than 112 years of global warming ago, when global average temperatures were cooler and humans weren\u2019t contributing significantly to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the great Thessaloniki<\/a> fire burned for 13 days. It left more than 70,000 people homeless, and destroyed two-thirds of Greece\u2019s second largest city. So hot and dry weather is the norm for the Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, especially during the summer, rather than being unusual weather conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AP ignores this fact about the region\u2019s climate. It also did not critically assess WWA. The AP portrays WWA an unbiased \u201cgroup of researchers that examines whether and to what extent extreme weather events are linked to climate change.\u201d But this is false. The entire reason for WWA\u2019s existence is specifically to \u201cattribute\u201d extreme weather events to human-caused climate change, in part to provide material that can be used in lawsuits filed against governments and the fossil fuel industry. The WWA believes the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u2019s data driven approach to understating the causes of extreme weather is far too cautious when it comes to attribution. WWA produces studies on the assumption that climate change caused or contributed to an extreme event, the only real question being how much more likely was the event to occur, or how much more severe was the event, than it would have been absent human fossil fuel use. That is the fallacy of affirming the consequent or assuming what you are attempting to prove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, WWA claimed the fires were \u201c22% more intense in 2025, Europe\u2019s worst recorded year of wildfires.\u201d This claim is unverified and misleading, at best. The Mediterranean region the AP discusses is not all of Europe, and it was not that regions worst year of wildfires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is worth noting that WWA seems to only attribute extreme weather to climate change, never mild or good weather. WWA specifically identifies its goal<\/a> as increasing the \u201cimmediacy of climate change, thereby increasing support for mitigation.\u201d Climate Realism<\/em> has explained at length<\/a> why single event attribution is scientifically misleading and unreliable at best in past articles, and we\u2019ve specifically refuted flawed WWA reports previously dozens of times, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year may well be a record fire year for parts of Europe and Asia, but only a sustained trend of worsening fires would prove that they were driven by climate change. No such trend exists, globally or in the individual countries mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the most recent available data from the joint collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency, Copernicus<\/a>, for each country we can see the wildfire trends are far from consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, we have\u00a0Turkey<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If anything, this trend shows that wildfires have been trending down since 2009\u2019s peak over Copernicus\u2019 period of record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next,\u00a0Greece<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Again, no real long term consistent trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally,\u00a0Cyprus<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Graph<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Again, particularly in the case of yearly burned area, there is no consistent trend in wildfire data for Cypress, and a possible overall decline in the yearly number of fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Downward or flat trends can\u2019t honestly be portrayed as increasing trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although global wildfire data also is spotty for long-term trends, what data exists consistently suggest a declining global<\/a> trend. NASA data shows a global decline in acreage lost to wildfire since 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extreme weather event attribution studies, produced rapidly in hours after a natural disaster strikes, aren\u2019t vetted science. Still, they are eagerly accepted as evidence of climate impacts by the alarmist media. This is absurd when any credible fact checker, editor, or investigative journalist could easily access publicly available data that devastates the climate change linkage at the core of the story. One would hope that the Associated Press\u2019 writers are gullible or na\u00efve, but even taking that charitable view, the lack of basic research is inexcusable for any journalistic outlet. One reason to doubt the charitable belief in how so many false climate tales are spun out of the AP is that the stories are all biased in the same direction of climate alarm \u2013 climate change is never not<\/em> to blame \u2013 and that the AP\u2019s climate coverage is specifically funded by foundations<\/a> and non-profit organizations who have long pushed climate alarm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

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 of the countries listed, and overall global wildfire data shows declining fire extent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":400061,"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":"Discover why the claim linking climate change to worsening wildfires in Europe is misleading. Explore the data contradicting this narrative.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Debunking AP's Claims: European Wildfires and Climate Change","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":false,"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":[691824778,691818056,691819743,691837724,691819271,691818911,691827793,691821189,691818913,691834206],"class_list":["post-400049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abc-news","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-propaganda","tag-cyprus","tag-greece","tag-mediterranean-climate","tag-the-associated-press-ap-2","tag-turkeys","tag-wildfires","tag-world-weather-attribution-wwa","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQNLWjyzyIRjwRxNTTwUCKzV-jH2Wx1_cypEypPdW6K5e8Pt74kqyUEdP5mO2iwW6KNOKJKUiFuyc5dVy0dTObfYu50FivLLeZE_rco4C96GbggUwAg93k2vac1mBr1ldB9uFH4CJTBO6siuI2KHcepZPpM5-1.jpeg?fit=1280%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1G4p","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":441762,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=441762","url_meta":{"origin":400049,"position":0},"title":"Wrong, AP, Wildfires Have Always Burned at Night","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"04\/28\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"The Associated Press (AP) claims in \u201cWildfires Used To \u2018Go To Sleep\u2019 At Night. 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