Dodo Doeden Admits Climate Changes But Denies Proven Link to Wildfires

Asked what the state should do about climate change and wildfires, Republican Toby Doeden denies any connection between the two phenomena:

O’BRIEN: The western part of the state saw significantly less snow this summer and, or, sorry, this winter, and multiple wildfires have burned through thousands of acres in western counties. What role does the state play in making positive changes when it comes to climate change and environmental disaster? And how would you, if elected, make those changes?

DOEDEN: Well, number one, I don’t believe climate change has anything to do with the details in the question you asked. I mean, anybody that’s taken the time to look back at our global weather patterns for the past however many thousands of years, you’ll see that it’s very cyclical, and they say it’s warming now, but there were periods in our past where it was much warmer than it is today.

But wildfires are a real concern, again, not because of climate control, because sometimes we don’t get enough moisture and it’s dry out here… [Toby Doeden, interviewed by Meghan O’Brien, “How Governor Candidate Toby Doeden Says He’ll Phase Out Property Taxes,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.05.15, from transcript].

Notice that Doeden isn’t really denying that the climate is changing. He acknowledges that the climate has changed in cycles and does not deny that we are in the midst of another cycle. The fact that our planet has cycled through warmer greenhouse periods in the past does not change the fact that we’re getting warmer now. The variety of causes of past warming does not change the fact that the current warming is coming from carbon dioxide and methane generated by human industrial activity.

And this current cycle of climate change is driving more wildfires, says science:

Researchers led by Loretta Mickley, senior research fellow in chemistry-climate interactions and leader of the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group at Harvard SEAS, report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that climate change directly accounts for 60-82% of total burned area in western U.S. forests and 33% in central and southern California since the early 1990s. On average, that’s 65% of total fire emissions in the U.S. between 1997 and 2020.

In turn, from 1997 to 2020, nearly half of the most dangerous types of wildfire smoke in the western U.S., what’s called fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, for its very small particle size and ability to penetrate lungs and the bloodstream, can be traced directly back to climate change. From 2010 to 2020, climate change explains 58% of the increase in this type of smoke pollution [Anne J. Manning, “The Smoky Signature of Climate Change,” Harvard University: John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2025.12.15].

…lots of science…

Since industrialisation (1850–1900), the Earth has experienced a long-term warming trend, with an estimated increase in the global mean surface temperature of 1.09°C (IPCC 2021). Some areas of the planet have experienced accelerated warming with an increase of 1.59°C over land and, for example, temperatures in the Arctic rising more than twice as fast as the global average (IPCC 2018; IPCC 2021). One of the most important effects of anthropogenic climate warming has been its contribution to observed changes in fire regimes (Bowman et al. 2011). Warming has increased the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather conditions that drive the occurrence and spread of wildfires and has caused vegetation that would not usually burn to dry out and combust (e.g., rainforests, permafrost, and peat swamps). A review of 116 articles written since 2013 on climate change and fire concluded that there is a strong consensus that climate change is increasing the likelihood of fire occurrence in many regions (Smith et al. 2020).

…Several attribution studies have focused on fire in the western USA. They have concluded that as a result of climate change, the number of autumn days with weather suitable for wildfires has doubled since the 1980s (Goss et al. 2020) and that fire extent has increased fivefold since the 1970s, also very likely due to human-induced warming and the resultant drying of fuels (Williams et al. 2019) [United Nations Environment Programme, “Spreading Like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires—A Rapid Response Assessment,” Feb. 2022, p. 34–36].

…and more darned science:

Multiple studies show that climate change is creating warmer, drier conditions that cause fire seasons in some regions like western North America to last longer and be more active.

One way scientists know some of the world’s forests are getting drier and more susceptible to burning is by looking at vapor pressure deficit. VPD is like relative humidity but calculated with temperature. It’s the difference between the amount of moisture in the air and the amount of moisture that the air could hold if it was saturated. As an area’s VPD increases, so do the risks of wildfire.

One study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of California at Los Angeles looked at VPD across the western U.S. between 1979 and 2020. Researchers found that most of the increase in VPD is explained by human-caused global warming. According to NOAA, “This study shows that western United States has passed a critical threshold since about 2000, and human-caused climate change is now the dominant contributor to the increase of wildfire risk.”

A 2016 study of western U.S. forests found that “human-caused climate change caused over half of the documented increases in fuel aridity since the 1970s and doubled the cumulative forest fire area since 1984” [Nature Conservancy, “Yes, Climate Change Is Raising the Risks—and Stakes—of Extreme Wildfires,” 2025.01.20].

But Toby Doeden shows us he’s just like the rest of the South Dakota Republican Party, unable to acknowledge obvious science, never mind come up with an actual plan to address real problems.