Syonyk aka Russell Graves has an interesting post summarizing the issue: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/08/wildfires-in-western-uni...

(he's not an expert, so take it with a grain of salt)

I agree that from what most scientists are saying, that sounds like the availability of fuel; but could climate change be responsible for the unusually hot and dry conditions?

Climate change is responsible for the increase in temperatures which lead to an increase in lightening. Climate change is also responsible for the wet conditions in the spring creating additional fuel later in the summer.

Even if it's not the primary cause, this is a highly visible, concrete set of events that can be pointed at to increase awareness.

I don't condone dishonesty or propaganda, but using these events to help point out that a) climate change is really happening, b) it's not just a few extra hot days during the summer, seems perfectly okay.

The idea that it's the "environmentalists' fault" is backwards though. Wildfires were poorly understood earlier in the century and it made sense to suppress them all. Environmentalists were advocating since the 20's for allowing controlled natural fires. It wasn't until some bad fires in the 80's when proper policies were finally put into place.

The consequences of bad forest management from earlier decades will still play out for a while longer, but now that the correct policies are in place, it will cease to become an excuse, while the consequences of climate change are only going to worsen. Forests have been increasingly drier and hotter. Logging activity has cut down the most fire resistant trees and replaced it with flammable young ones. Trump suggests to increase logging and blame the liberals. When politicians blame forest management from a century ago, it is an argument in bad faith, as a way to ignore the myriad impacts of climate change. We should be constantly improving our forest management, yes, but it's something already being worked on, while there is so much resistance to policies to reduce climate change.

> Climate change obviously plays a role...

FWIW, here in BC the 3 summers that we had fires coincided with the record beating heat.