As NYC is inundated with wildfire smoke, Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ calmly shows link to climate crisis, while Murdoch's Fox News mocks it

Written by John Whitehouse

Research contributions from Sage Hodil

Published

New York City is currently inundated with a hazardous level of wildfire smoke, making the skies appear yellowish-orange.

The smoke is from wildfires in Canada, which scientists say are “becoming bigger and more frequent” due to climate change, as reliably explained by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal:

Wildfires like those ravaging Canada are becoming bigger and more frequent as forests around the world increasingly dry out amid the warming climate, many scientists say.

Some of the biggest fires are breaking out in the boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere such as most of the ones in Canada. That is because the Arctic region has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, said Carly Phillips, a Boston-based research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In the boreal areas—mostly conifer forests with long winters and short summers—of Canada and Alaska, she said the annual area burned has nearly doubled in the past 60 years, along with an increase in the frequency of large fires. Russia’s vast Siberian forests have been consumed by giant fires too. Phillips said this year’s outbreak, while unprecedented in size, is just following the trend.

“I don’t know if it’s a tipping point, but what this underscores is that the climate crisis is here and now,” Phillips said.

The link is so obvious and uncontroversial that Journal staff members have no problems tweeting it.

And yet, over at Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, this is just another reason for hosts to punch left, this time at frequent target Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who dared to point out that the country has work to do to adapt to the climate crisis.

From the June 7, 2023, edition of of Fox News' Outnumbered

None of this is novel. Fox News (and the Journal’s right-wing editorial board) have for years pushed climate denial on the body politic. Now that the effects of the climate crisis are impossible to miss, the network is still refusing to recalibrate.

Like the Dominion case shows, it’s not clear if Fox’s audience — or whatever is left of it — will allow the network to speak the truth.

Either way, I’d recommend that people working at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan buy some high-quality masks. They might even still have some sitting around.