Video shows controlled burn, not climate change hoax

A video of an aerial view of trees being torched below has been fodder for conspiracy theories over the years. Debunked claims in 2020 said it showed a Chinese spy setting fires in the United States, and a drone setting wildfires on the West Coast. 

Now it’s being used as evidence of a climate change hoax. 

"Soooooo… THIS is our TRUE climate change… got it," one Instagram post sharing the video said. 

"Apparently California sets their own forest fires and claims them as climate change effects!!!" another said. 

These posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The video shows a flamethrower mounted to a helicopter that’s involved in a controlled burn, a standard firefighting tactic to keep forests healthy, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesperson told PolitiFact in 2020.  

A helitorch, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, is "an aerial ignition device hung from or mounted on a helicopter to disperse ignited lumps of gelled gasoline. Used for backfires, burnouts or prescribed burns." 

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The video was posted on social media in August 2020 and credited to an Instagram account with the username @joshua.payet, which appears to no longer exist on the social media platform. The account told Agence France-Presse in 2020 that he had filmed the video and was a trained firefighter but he wouldn’t reveal where the footage was taken. 

"Heli-torch," read the caption in the Aug. 21, 2020, Instagram post sharing the video. "Fighting fire with fire. … We are not just burning the forest. This is a tactic to fight a brush fire." 

We rate claims that this footage shows fires that California alleges were caused by climate change False.