‘Blatant manipulation’: Trump administration exploited wildfire science to promote logging

Revealed: emails show Trump and appointees tried to craft a narrative that forest protection efforts are responsible for wildfires

Political appointees at the interior department have sought to play up climate pollution from California wildfires while downplaying emissions from fossil fuels as a way of promoting more logging in the nation's forests, internal emails obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The messaging plan was crafted in support of Donald Trump's pro-industry arguments for harvesting more timber in California, which he says would thin forests and prevent fires - a point experts refute.