The truth about the LA wildfires 

It is like a Hollywood disaster movie with a difference: it really is happening close to Hollywood, and the stars involved, such as James Woods and Eugene Levy, aren’t acting – they really are fleeing their homes as a wildfire singes residential areas in the Pacific Palisades area on the north-west fringe of Los Angeles. Several film premieres have been cancelled, along with the nomination ceremony for the Screen Actors Guild awards. 

We know what to expect, however, when we do get to those awards ceremonies: celebs lecturing us on climate change and how it has been brought to their doorstep. Except that the habitual attribution of wildfires to climate change somewhat ignores the reality: that actually global wildfire burn has decreased over the past 25 years. In the US we have data going back a century, and it tells a story which is very different from that which tends to get told whenever fires break out.