Well CAADies, you might remember that back in June, we warned about the kinds of lies we could expect Big Tech to broadcast about wildfires. And if you’re in the EU, you may have soon after gotten an email from our friends at EDMO, who issued a strikingly similar warning about the kind of fake narratives we could expect during Europe’s heatwaves. Sure enough, both predictions came true. And now, with wildfires raging across Spain and France, fires also raging in Greece and on Crete, and wildfires even prompting evacuations in eastern England, the evidence is pretty hard to ignore.
Have disinformation experts become so smart we can now predict the future? Maybe! More likely, we looked at what happened in previous extreme weather seasons, noticed that Big Tech had done little to improve information integrity online, and concluded the same playbook would be rolled out again. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, 2026 has been no exception.
Over the past month, a heat wave across Europe triggered a wave of trolling about air conditioning. While A/C has long-been standard in much of the US, it’s still less common across Europe, even as rising temperatures make it an increasingly important climate change adaptation measure.
Meanwhile, wildfires in Canada were producing so much smoke that it was blanketing the US East Coast. Given the size of those media markets, this isn’t just Canada’s story anymore & it’s something everyone had to hear about.
The only real surprise this season isn’t that the lies are spreading, it’s that the conspiracy theories skipped the usual warm up act. As our latest brief shows, instead of beginning with superficially credible talking points before descending into nonsense, they’ve gone straight for the tin foil hats.
Below is an excerpt of our latest analysis. You might’ve heard about it from Science Feedback or Dana Drugmand, and you can read the full brief, A Summer of Extreme Lies: Heatwave and Wildfire Climate Disinformation in 2026, on the newly redesigned CAAD website!
Check it out and let us know what you think- especially if you might want to contribute to our new blog section!
American Wildfire Smoke Response: Blame Canada, Then Nuke ‘em
While CAAD has documented an increase in violent rhetoric targeting protestors and land defenders in recent years, the calls for individual violence have gone nuclear-literally.
One X user posted that “if the air quality in the northeast US goes down even 1% due to canada not being able to get their wildfires under control, america should brutally nuke every canadian city as retribution.”
Fact check: in addition to the obviously tragic loss of lives, if the US were to “brutally nuke every Canadian city” the resulting bombing would cause a lot of additional fires, that would then blow not just smoke but the fallout of nuclear radiation into the northeast US, almost certainly making air quality go down more than the user’s proposed 1% limit.
This user, though joking and with only a relatively small number of likes and comments, represents the extreme end of an increasingly common spectrum of violent rhetoric, and even beyond the replies agreeing and going further, was not the only poster suggesting violence in response to the impact of climate change being described as a failure of climate-concerned parties, with another user suggesting Canada “should be conquered” because of the wildfires happening every year. (Unclear by whom they should be conquered, as the assumption would be the US, ignoring the fact the US also experiences annual wildfires.)
These responses are premised in climate disinformation narratives that presume countries are neglecting to manage forests and should be held accountable for the consequences of wildfires as well as providing the participatory disinformation in alignment with non-climate partisan attacks on Canadian sovereignty that President Trump has continued since, as part of the feedback loop of participatory disinformation.
This escalation in rhetoric, laundered as humor, normalizes violence on a society-wide scale, a harm of social media that’s been well–documented but hardly corrected by platform owners, although civil society groups are responding with criticisms of the Canadian government’s fast-tracking of fossil fuel expansion.
What Now? Policymakers Taking Action!
While Big Tech stands by, policymakers have started moving, with climate disinformation during extreme weather events and harassment of scientists being listed among the systemic risks major platforms should address under the EU’s DSA.
France, meanwhile, is beginning enforcement of its ban on fossil fuel advertising, while we hear that the country is preparing its “National Plan to Access Environmental Information” as part of its commitment as a signatory to the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, part of the Global Initiative on Information Integrity on Climate Change, or GIIICC (pronounced “geek”, until someone makes us stop.)
Speaking of, Australia’s the latest country to join the GIIICCs, making it the 16th nation to sign up since the launch last year at COP30, and a promising sign for its co-leadership of COP31!
IN CAAD NEWS
- Governments Knew the Risks of Global Warming as They Chose Fossil-Fueled Growth in the 1950s and ’60s
- In 2026, we still need to build an infrastructure of trust
- Federal Court Suspends Trump Immigration Policy Targeting Technology Researchers
- Are electric car batteries as dirty as critics claim?
- From AI to greenlash: How is climate disinformation evolving?
- A Policy Playbook to Inoculate the Public Against AI Text Falsehoods
- Some right-wing media figures blast commonsense health advice that limits exposure to dangerous wildfire smoke
IN OTHER NEWS
- The Fraud of “Clean” Natural Gas How Big Oil and Gas Created the Myth that Natural Gas is a Climate Solution
- Seven in ten across Europe say biggest polluters and climate laggards should pay more, challenging rollback of EU ETS
- To Curb Online Harm to Children, Tax Amplification
Got a lead that isn’t getting the scrutiny it deserves? Or a hunch that something doesn’t quite add up? Send it our way at [email protected]