Quartz: “Wildfires in northern and central California increased fivefold between 1971 and 2021, according to a new study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The scientists behind the study found that those fires were mostly caused by anthropogenic climate change, the kind accelerated by human actions like burning fossil fuels and clear-cutting land. As part of their research, the scientists did a statistical analysis of the summer months during those four decades, which helped them understand how the California landscape might have looked without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. They discovered that the wildfire burn area grew 172% more than it would have in the absence of such emissions…”