Then, before investigators have even determined how the fires started, headlines begin linking the smoke to climate change. What is new is the growing tendency to treat every smoky sky as proof of climate change. If global burned areas are unusually low, why are so many stories describing an escalating wildfire emergency and attributing it to climate change? The IPCC also reports with high confidence that the global land area burned has declined in recent decades. It does not tell us why the fire started, nor does it prove that climate change was the primary cause.