A general view of the burned residential areas as wildfires continue to wreak havoc, reaching their fifth day and leaving extensive damage in residential areas in Los Angeles, California, United States on January 12, 2025. (Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Some environmental critics are pushing back on the group's rise to notoriety in the media and classified the group as "alarmist," fueled by "leftist organizations that are driving the climate narrative."
"They're just trying to manipulate people, and it's effective. It works. I've talked to people that are saying that this is caused by climate change, and it's frustrating," Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute – a nonprofit think tank group platforming environmental policies that "promote economic freedom" – told Fox News Digital in an interview.
"There's no peer review that's been done on this data," he added. "They rush out a flash study that supposedly found that global warming boosted fire weather conditions in the area by 35% and intensity by 6%. Well, what about the fires that happened in 1895? Who's to blame for those? This is just a geography that's sort of right for this situation to happen from time to time."
Isaac added that California's "poor management" is largely to blame and will "happen when they're telling people they can't clear their land."
Isaac criticized California’s spending priorities, noting that while the state allocates tens of billions of dollars to its climate commitment – originally over $50 billion, later reduced to around $45 billion – it spent roughly $4.2 billion on fire prevention in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
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Sun rises over the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of west Los Angeles, in the aftermath of devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area forcing people to evacuate, in California, U.S., January 9, 2025. (Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters)
Both Malloy and Isaac agreed that there will likely be an uptick in climate change-driven initiatives after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month to axe the Biden-era U.S. climate commitments, which aimed to reduce emissions 61-66% by 2035.
The WWA co-founder, Otto, has previously claimed in a 2022 UK magazine article that "Who ‘does science’ is a hugely important issue," and that if "climate change is worked on exclusively by white men, it means that the questions asked are those that are relevant to white men."
"But people most affected by climate change are not white men, so if all these other people are effectively excluded from the scientific process, the problems we have to face in climate change will not be properly addressed and you will not find solutions for how to best transform a society," Otto wrote.
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Washington , DC - January 20: President Donald Trump signs a series of executive orders at the White House on January 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images) (Getty)
On its website, WWA lists several papers included in peer-reviewed journals including in the Weather and Climate Extremes, Environmental Research: Climate and Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, among others.
WWA conducts its studies by analyzing real-world weather data from regional weather stations to determine how rare and intense an extreme weather event is, according to its website. Researchers then compare the likelihood of such events currently with their expected frequency before the widespread burning of fossil fuels in the late 1800s.
WWA researchers occasionally face difficulties that prevent them from providing numerical results in their studies. These challenges may arise, its website states, if there isn’t enough reliable weather data available or if the computer models used for analysis are not well-suited to accurately simulate the specific weather event being studied.
"If a study does not have a conclusive result because of these challenges, that does not necessarily mean that climate change played no role in the weather event," the WWA website states.
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WWA did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Fox News Digital.
Jamie Joseph is a writer who covers politics. She leads Fox News Digital coverage of the Senate.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/researchers-blame-ca-wildfires-climate-change-pedal-alarmist-non-peer-reviewed-studies-experts