Researchers blame CA wildfires on climate change, peddle ‘alarmist’ non-peer reviewed studies: experts

An international research group backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos and the progressive George Soros Foundation has made headlines in major news outlets recently for its study claiming that the LA wildfires were caused by “human-induced” climate change.

The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, founded in 2014 by Dr. Friederike Otto and Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, has published many scientific studies built on the presupposition that climate change may affect, and even cause, extreme weather events. The group also receives funds from the Grantham Institute and the European Climate Foundation. 

On Jan. 28, the research group published what it called a “rapid attribution” study titled, “Climate change increased the likelihood of wildfire disaster in highly exposed Los Angeles area,” and was subsequently picked up by several major media outlets.

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Some environmental critics are pushing back on the group’s rise to notoriety in the media and classified it as “alarmist,” fueled by “leftist organizations that are driving the climate narrative.”

“They’re just trying to manipulate people, and it’s effective. It works. I’ve talked to people that are saying that this is caused by climate change, and it’s frustrating,” Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, a nonprofit think tank group platforming environmental policies that “promote economic freedom,” told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

“There’s no peer review that’s been done on this data,” he added. “They rush out a flash study that supposedly found that global warming boosted fire weather conditions in the area by 35% and intensity by 6%. Well, what about the fires that happened in 1895? Who’s to blame for those? This is just a geography that’s sort of right for this situation to happen from time to time.”

Isaac added that California’s “poor management” is largely to blame and will “happen when they’re telling people they can’t clear their land.”

Isaac criticized California’s spending priorities, noting that while the state allocates tens of billions of dollars to its climate commitment – originally over $50 billion, later reduced to around $45 billion – it spent roughly $4.2 billion on fire prevention in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

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“You would think it would be a major priority for California, because of how susceptible they are to wildfires,” he said.

Steve Milloy, former Trump EPA Transition Team member, also told Fox News Digital that the WWA’s recent study was problematic, and dubbed it “pal-reviewed.” 

“There’s no peer review going on. It’s not science,” Milloy said. “You know, this whole attribution thing is bogus. There’s no scientific foundation for it. It’s good propaganda, because they have the whole system organized where no one in the media asks any questions, they hide the origin and everything, and it makes for good headlines.”

Both Milloy and Isaac agreed that there will likely be an uptick in climate change-driven initiatives after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month to axe the Biden-era U.S. climate commitments, which aimed to reduce emissions 61-66% by 2035. 

The WWA co-founder, Otto, has previously claimed in a 2022 U.K. magazine article that “Who ‘does science’ is a hugely important issue,” and that if “climate change is worked on exclusively by white men, it means that the questions asked are those that are relevant to white men.”

“But people most affected by climate change are not white men, so if all these other people are effectively excluded from the scientific process, the problems we have to face in climate change will not be properly addressed and you will not find solutions for how to best transform a society,” Otto wrote.

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According to the WWA’s FAQ page on its website, “rapid attribution studies are published before peer review in order to release the results soon after events have taken place” and adds that its studies are later published in peer-reviewed journals. 

“Scientific studies on extreme weather events, going through peer-review, are usually published months or even years after an event occurred, when the public has moved on and questions about responsibilities, rebuilding or relocating have been debated without taking scientific evidence on the influence of climate change into account,” the WWA website states. 

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On its website, WWA lists several papers included in peer-reviewed journals, including in the Weather and Climate Extremes, Environmental Research: Climate and Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, among others.

WWA conducts its studies by analyzing real-world weather data from regional weather stations to determine how rare and intense an extreme weather event is, according to its website. Researchers then compare the likelihood of such events currently with their expected frequency before the widespread burning of fossil fuels in the late 1800s. 

WWA researchers occasionally face difficulties that prevent them from providing numerical results in their studies. These challenges may arise, its website states, if there isn’t enough reliable weather data available or if the computer models used for analysis are not well-suited to accurately simulate the specific weather event being studied.

“If a study does not have a conclusive result because of these challenges, that does not necessarily mean that climate change played no role in the weather event,” the WWA website states.

WWA did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Fox News Digital.