Big Tech And The Flames Of Wildfire Lies

Monetized social media makes climate mis-/disinfo memes a reliable investment in the attention economy

According to a 2023 study from the Union of Concerned Scientists, 37% of the western U.S. and southwestern Canada that had been burned by wildfires since 1986 could be linked to the planet’s 88 biggest fossil fuel and cement companies. 

These wildfires are made worse by climate change, as experts like the Canadian Climate Institute or President Obama’s Science Advisor Dr. John Holdren have been explaining (in under three minutes!) for over a decade. Warmer temperatures mean more dry plant matter, for example, so while climate change isn’t lighting the spark that starts a fire, it is making it so that fire has so much more kindling to burn. 

But as the Union of Concerned Scientists were nailing down just how much of the increase in wildfire burns can be blamed on the 88 biggest climate-changing companies in the scientific literature, over on social media, as we show in this brief, a different explanation had begun taking root on Big Tech platforms. To explain away the climate connection, disinfluencers are blaming arsonists to distract from climate causes, and they’re even working in an anti-renewable angle by claiming the fires were set intentionally to clear land for wind farms. 

As the 2026 wildfire season begins, we can expect a fresh round of lies to follow the flames, as they have in recent years around the world, thanks to Big Tech.

The Origins of Wildfire Lies Spread Around the World Online 

The Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition, Friends of the Earth, and Roots included a case study on the Chile wildfire arson claims in a report on climate disinformation in Latin America, illustrating how the narratives spread digitally across languages and hemispheres, while the arson disinformation narrative was tracked in a 2023 Green Latinos’ report on Spanish-language climate disinformation. It identified the origins in the ashes of the 2018 Greek wildfires (more from a CAAD data monitor on that history here), and the charted spikes in the narrative as it was translated from Chile and Spain, to Canadian wildfires in English, and then Greek, then in reference to Hawaiian wildfires, and finally back to Spain, just across that year.

And just like climate change has made fires worse, Big Tech has made digital disinformation worse by creating an attention economy that broadcasts lies no matter the cost, as explored in depth in CAAD’s 2024 report, Extreme Weather, Extreme Content. 

In 2024, CAAD worked with academics at McGill and Carleton University to chart the Canadian climate conversation and found “references to lasers, drones, weather control, eco-terrorism, and state-driven arson circulated widely as people sought information on evacuation, support services, loved ones, and fellow residents. The chaos affected political leaders managing the crisis, firefighting, evacuation routes, media reporting, and, of course, people making hard decisions about their health and the safety of their communities.”

By 2025, Alex Jones was doing laps around official sources when it came to reaching X/Twitter audiences during wildfires, while CAAD monitoring of Canadian climate conversations confirmed the meme-ification of wildfire-related climate disinformation, with, for example, bad posts mocking the idea of “arresting climate change,” while otherwise blaming climate policies or activists for starting the fires, fully completing the DARVO dance (“Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender”).

Based on all that, we already know what to expect: a handful of core disinformation narratives followed by a wave of even-more-deranged conspiracies and denial.

The first three narratives we identified as “core” narratives, those that consistently emerge early and drive initial breakout. The remaining two are supplementary narratives, which typically surface after the core narratives gain traction. While still persistent, these tend to remain more confined to aggressive anti-climate and denialist communities.

Wildfire and Climate Disinformation Narratives:

• Arson Deflection: Disinfluencers attribute wildfires to arson to downplay or dismiss the role of climate change, and they target mainstream media with a harassment tactic known as “working the refs” (reporters) by accusing them of downplaying the arson and inflating climate concerns to coerce them into covering that disinfo.
• Government Mismanagement: Disinfluencers accuse governments of distorting wildfire narratives to advance a climate agenda, or failing to implement proper resources for forest management. Leaders are blamed either for failing to prevent wildfires through proper forest management, for misrepresenting the success of relief efforts, or prioritizing international funding over domestic needs.
  • Statements from public officials are selectively quoted or stripped of context to suggest that authorities themselves contradict climate explanations. This tactic creates misleading credibility for anti-climate narratives while maintaining plausible deniability.
• Climate Policy Backlash: Disinfluencers use wildfires as an excuse to claim that climate policies are unnecessary, harmful, or self-serving – and that climate solutions, such as lithium-ion batteries, pose their own fire risks.
  • This narrative is used to reframe climate policies as contributors to wildfire insecurity, as opposed to a solution. (DARVO!) 

Supplementary Narratives:

• Alleged Alarmism: Deniers use wildfire coverage to claim climate change is exaggerated or misleading, undermining trust in the science and the need for action. 
  • Disinformation actors routinely claim the media, political leaders, and climate activists use misleading data to manufacture urgency, all while these same deniers often lean on their own unsupported “junk science.”  
  • Industry-backed think tanks like The Fraser Institute and Macdonald Laurier Institute argue that wildfires and extreme weather are not worsening due to climate change, denying mainstream climate science.
• Conspiracy Narratives: Some posters allege wildfires are deliberately set to manufacture or advance climate narratives. Fringe claims that Canada is intentionally harming the air quality of the northern United States have been broadcast by U.S.-based social media platforms. 
  • While lower in engagement, these narratives serve as an escalation layer and always seem to pop up in wildfire disinformation. 

Engagement Patterns Make Disinformation Predictable

Over the last couple of years, engagement with core narratives — deflection to arson, government failures, and policy backlash — has been consistently high. These narratives serve as a gateway to more extreme climate misinformation. Disinformation actors leverage these claims without having to outright deny climate change, simply belittling the urgency and disconnecting it from wildfire discourse.

Once these narratives gain traction and spread across social media platforms, fringe narratives (conspiracies, alarmism claims, and denial) break free. While these claims receive less overall engagement and meaningful spread, they remain persistent in the climate disinformation space across all discourse, not just that which is related to wildfires. 

Disinfluencers have established a pattern of initially sowing distrust in the cause of wildfires and politicizing government response, which then builds to supporting conspiracism in climate science, and finally allows for full denial. 

New Climate and Wildfire Disinformation to Expect in 2026

While it is still early in the season, mainstream media is already gearing up with wildfire reporting, warning Canadians that wildfire seasons are “growing longer, larger and more destructive.”

As these reports assess the risks across the region and fires start igniting, deniers have already begun to lay the groundwork for countering climate change narratives with their own disinformation – for example, one user claiming that Canada never used to have a “fire season,” but not because of climate change. Rather, “it is because of arson, not wildfires.” 

Another post claimed “lithium deposits” are to blame for the prevalence – and intensity – of wildfires, implying a conspiracy to burn down the forest to mine the lithium for EVs. 

At this point, social media users know that if they spread conspiracy theories about climate change, platforms might eventually reward them with attention, influence, and money, the same way a gambler “knows” someone’s eventually going to hit the slot machine jackpot. It’s just a matter of pulling the lever.

Social Media Companies Could Stop This, If They Wanted. 

For years now, social media companies have been warned about the false claims their platforms broadcast to millions of users during extreme weather events, when accurate information can mean literally life or death. 

Researchers have mapped the networks, tracked the false narratives, and documented the harms. Companies that care about information integrity have all the information they need to act. 

Given that these lies are broadcast to millions of people every year, instead of the truth they need to survive the climate crisis, they get an information crisis too. 

That’s why a majority of Canadians, 86%, want Ottawa to take action against climate disinformation during extreme weather events. 

Methodology

We utilised our database of known disinformation sites and actors, as well as an open search of keywords related to Canadian wildfires on Brandwatch. This information helped us to gauge climate disinformation narratives, monitor where trends occurred, who the top disinformers were, and where they coordinated.

Finally, we used the Brandwatch tool to pull volume numbers, highest engagement, and metric analysis. We also pulled content from our most engaged users, particularly from X, to help gauge conversation, disinformation spread, and top disinformers. 

Combining these lists and tools, our human analyst, with expertise in the climate disinformation space, was able to determine key narratives, voices, and trends.

Our current climate disinformation general query uses the following search string:

(climate OR climatechange OR climatecrisis OR “global warming” OR “global temperature”) AND (thunberg OR “extinction rebellion” OR extinctionrebellion OR “climate action network” OR climatehoax OR climatecult OR climategate OR climatescam OR “net zero” OR netzero OR (energy NEAR/5 (renewable OR solar OR clean OR wind OR turbine)) OR fossilgas OR lng OR “zero emissions” OR “carbon capture” OR agroecology) // (“fossil fuels” OR renewables) AND (“energy independence” OR “energy security”)