Australia's Wildfires Spark Disinformation Battle as They Take a Tragic Toll
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Blaming arsonists, blaming "fire load" and lack of forest manangement, etc. Go listen to the rural fire chiefs: climate change is preventing management, is lengthening the season, making outbreaks more intense and causing them to spread further than before.
Meanwhile the climate denying policies of their politicians leads them to cutting service funding, preventing activism, promoting coal mining and use.
This isn't the time to be an armchair fire expert. Australia is burning and climate change is the primary factor in the seriousness of the situation.
Blaming it all on management practices is probably not particularly productive. But neither is giving them a pass.
And isn't it still true that funding was cut for these programs or is that more disinformation? We can argue about whether any amount of funding would have prevented these fires but the lack of it is certainly making things worse, right?
Effectively though, the gov has had no strategy either to fund or manage increased risks associated with climate change, because their unofficial line on climate change is 'it's not here, this isn't happening'.
The whole reason for the public find raising for volunteer firefighters kicking off, was that the PM refused to give them any additional funding (up until a few weeks ago). Despite the increased length of the fire season. They were using their own trucks, chainsaws etc even having to buy their own P2 masks from bunnings. Now of course the gov is providing P2 masks to half the state.
So yes, while funding was not cut, it has not increased in line with the increased risk, as to do so would acknowledge the climate change elephant.
We need to get past the idea that we can reason this out with faux-rational arguments on message boards.
Let the political class make all of our decisions for us without any armchair quarterbacking and see where that gets you. If we don't poke our noses into things then they see a mandate to do whatever they decide they have a mandate to do. Nobody's complaining so things are going great.
Democracy without participation is dangerously unstable.
(I'd suggest that armchair quarterbacks are very much the vanguard of the political class, and not some sort of check on power we might like to believe)
It is genuinely bizarre to see the arson talking point being laid on so thick coming off the back of a year with the lowest rainfall and highest temperatures on record.
What our head fire fighters were saying was simply that they needed more money for equipment and training more volunteers.
The reason that fire was so damaging, was due to poor fuel management and a reluctantance to aggressively fight the fire. These were the conclusions of the McLeod Inquiry and a Parliamentary Committee. Which had specific quotes like
"it is disturbing that a lightening strike on 8th January can develop into such a destructive blaze and destroy so much over a week later when you consider the knowledge and resources available for its control[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Canberra_bushfires
[2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
[3] https://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/?tag=mcintyres-hut-fire
[4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-17/firestorm-fallout-who...
The 2003 Canberra bush fire has many similarities to the current season. It occurred during a drought. It occurred in terrain that is difficult to access. I strongly suspect that the same issues have occurred this fire season. All you have to do is watch the gif of the movement of the fire to see how rapidly it went from benign to nightmare. However, the scale of destruction has increased significantly since then. There is no doubt that climate change has made fire seasons longer, fires more destructive, and more random.
The truth is never as easy or as simple as people make out. It is probably highly likely that a number of factors have resulted in the current circumstances. This should not be construed as an excuse to not take more action on climate change. It also means that taking action to reduce carbon emissions won't solve this.
Successful action requires making this a bipartisan issue. Unfortunately, the actions taken to date. To use the fires as a wedge are likely to result in that not occurring.
The NSW Police Force has taken legal action against more than 180 people for bushfire-related offences since late last year.
Numerous bush and grass fires have impacted the state, claiming the lives of 18 people and destroying hundreds of millions of animals and livestock, thousands of homes, and more than 4.9 million hectares of land, so far this bushfire season.
Since Friday 8 November 2019, legal action – which ranges from cautions through to criminal charges – has been taken against 183 people – including 40 juveniles – for 205 bushfire-related offences.
Of note:
24 people have been charged over alleged deliberately-lit bushfires
53 people have had legal actions for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban, and
47 people have had legal actions for allegedly discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land.
Source: NSW Police official webpage
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/08/polic...
edit: and you missed (as did everyone else reporting on this) the pertinent piece from that article, which suggests that none of the fires have yet been linked to any of these arrests.
"Investigations into the cause, origin and overall impact of fires are continuing and since the latest State of Emergency was declared last Thursday (2 January 2020), Strike Force Tronto has provided expertise to six Police Area Commands and eight Police Districts."
Firstly, by the NSW police for conflating the severity of the current bushfires with the people they have arrested for arson - even though they have pointed to no-one being arrested for starting any of those fires. Secondly, by everyone reporting on this article while removing the sentence which alludes to that very fact.
By your comment, did you not read the Guardian article? It expressly does consider, but did not get a response from the NSW police. The articles main argument is that these reports from police have been misused with a campaign driven in part by bots and trolls (and murdoch papers) to divert attention from the real issues.
Now while I fully believe that in time we will see actual charges laid for these bushfires, as usually happens, to report numbers before there is evidence to support it is misinformation. Particularly also, as you yourself have argued further down the thread, in that arson is secondary, or at least oblique to the very real issue of increased load and increased hot, dry and windy conditions.
I read the article twice, I didn't see that. Please provide the exact quote.
> to report numbers before there is evidence to support it is misinformation
The police state "24 people have been charged over alleged deliberately-lit bushfires" - they've reported a number of people they've charged. What evidence do you require beyond the official police statement describing how many arrests they made. An audit?
Sorry, I would not normally have suggested otherwise - I misunderstood your previous comment where you made reference to being 'reasonably confident' to the content of the article due to its title, I see now this was more rhetorical than actual.
>Please provide the exact quote.
"NSW police statistics show 24 individuals have been arrested for deliberately lighting bushfires during the current fire season."
>What evidence do you require beyond the official police statement describing how many arrests they made.
That they actually link the arson to the bushfire they have charged someone with lighting? I mean, if they charged them they have evidence right? Surely at least one of those 24 people have been charged with one of the current fires? Their comment that they are still investigating the cause of current fires suggests perhaps none of these are linked. All other reports I have seen of charges are from September through November. Why did you and everyone else reciting these stats leave the qualifying comment out?
And why conflate the figures from the pre-fire season with the current fires? Why not just say that historically, nearly half of bushfires are suspected to be deliberately lit. Or better yet, 13% of bushfires have been proven historically to be deliberately lit.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-20/bushfire-igni...
Do the numbers show the rate of arson this fire season worse than previous ones? If it is not, then why is it being used to suggest otherwise?
This is why I said this is a very good example of misinformation. It is objectively true on the face of what is reported, it produces a compelling narrative which is difficult to question if you are just skimming the news, while leaving out pertinent information that may complicate that narrative.
I left out more than half of the article but provided a link to the entire source from the moment I posted it, never edited. As for the comment I believe you are referring to "Investigations into the cause, origin and overall impact of fires are continuing".
There a lot of fires and investigations are on-going. To my reading it is just police boilerplate and not a qualifying comment. If you have 100 fires and you've managed to partially investigate 30 of them but the situation was still developing with new fires popping up then you would write "Investigations into the cause, origin and overall impact of fires are continuing".
The statement is just a: Hey we've been working hard on the bushfire problem, here's some stuff we've already done but don't think we are resting on our laurels, there's more to do and we're working hard on that.
That aside, and for the record, as I saw it and was arguing, there were two issues with the widespread posting of the report.
1. The use of this report and others, without context, by MSM as an explanation in and of itself as the cause of bushfires - or at least smoke-screening to avoid talking about other causes. This misinformation, even at its best (ie similar to the way in which yours was delivered), still relies on half truths delivered without context to create a misleading narrative. These narratives in the media are being created and propelled for the express purpose to drown out substantive calls for action on climate change. You have not argued this point so I take it you at least agree with this.
2. The report itself is misinforming. ie. it is, through vagary, suggesting these out of control bushfires in Nov-Dec were caused by arsonists, and through specificity, suggesting that these numbers were significant (if they even refer to these fires).
They are not. Australia has lower rates than most of the world in bushfire arson. There were over a hundred separate major bushfires in that period in NSW. Estimates from a previous study from 2001-2006 show that Australia on average has around 60,000 bushfires every year. Most burn themselves out reasonably quickly, or with the help of one of the rural fire services. You can no more point to arson as the cause of these particular bushfires as you could to throwing a snowball to start an avalanche. It is the literal straw breaking the camels back. In a warming world, every unusually hot dry season is a bit worse than the last. To stop bushfires there is only one thing that makes a makes a difference - water content. Not arson, not undergrowth, not fuel load.
Here is a great series of images from NASA, again via the Guardian, to explain how these fires spread, and how quickly. You can see the change in directions of the fires due the winds. Entire regions lit up or burnt out in a day. Its fucking terrifying.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/nov/21/how-au...
>> Please provide the exact quote.
> "NSW police statistics show 24 individuals have been arrested for deliberately lighting bushfires during the current fire season."
That's merely an accurate restatement of the police statement. You said "did not get a response from the NSW police" but nowhere in the article (that I saw) does it say anything about how the Guardian made any attempt to contact the police nor fail to get a response.
"Investigations into the cause, origin and overall impact of fires are continuing" - NSW police strike force Tronto
So far 1% of the bushfires can be officially attributed to arson and investigations are continuing.
I feel like it is relevant because even if Arson is responsible for 2% of the fires, it would be advantageous to mitigate things that are within our control. You can't control lightning, but ideally with proper education people will no longer want to start fires or you hold those accountable who do to such an extent it ideally prevents copy cats.
I feel the best way to stop something isn't applying the band-aid afterwards, but to try to stop it before it starts.
Personally I think that would be like saying, "How you get cancer is not really important, that's the final step in a long chain and will happen naturally at some point."
The problem with arsonists starting fires isn't education, it's crazy people, and you'll never completely get rid of crazy people.
It is my personal belief that this person intended to start the fire and managed to become a firefighter in order to try to not get caught and wasn't a firefighter for 10 years and all of a sudden decided to go rogue.
I could very well be wrong, and I do not disagree with you, society will always have crazy/evil people who want to do harm for whatever reasons and education will do nothing for those people. However I think a lot of the 'arson' wasn't intentional but was people camping, smoking or doing other things which education can help prevent.
Yes, most of the 180 arrests number that's going around are from these sorts of scenarios instead of arson.
That said, Australians get plenty of education already on the dangers of fire. Fire bans and high risk days are very much publicized. My grandparents nearly lost a house to Hobart's fires in 1967. It just takes one person out of Australia's 20M to dispose improperly of a cigarette, and there are plenty of natural ignition sources to add onto that.
Just look at an Aussie fire sign, which you'll see all over: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-13/bushfire-danger-ratin...
"Low/Moderate, High, Very High, Severe, Extreme, and Catastrophic"
Cigarette, lightning strike, shitheads with fireworks, foolish campers, once the bomb is primed it doesn't really matter who pushes the button. When it goes off, watch out.
.The ignition source is really not relevant, that's the final step in a long chain and will happen naturally at some point.
The ignition source is irrelevant. If an arson tries to start a fire during a wet winter the fire won't start or spread very far. However, we are in a difficult drought with very hot and dry conditions even in late spring. The problem is that once a fire gets started, by any means, it can spread very easily.
Back at ya, matey.
Any ignition source, deliberate, accidental or natural can set it off. Yes arson happens, no the arsonist(s) didn't create the conditions necessary to burn a million hectares, he merely provided the ignition source.
Yes, there have been some cases of arson. No, Australia wouldn't be wildfire-free this year if there hadn't been any arson.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-08/fires-misinformation-...
> A number of the tweets took police figures out of context and claimed almost 200 arsonists had been arrested in NSW.
> An article posted by an American far-right figure went one step further, claiming left-wing ecoterrorists were responsible for lighting the blazes.
The difference is that the bush has dried out more than usual, it's been much hotter than usual, and budget cuts have meant that the bush hasn't been managed well (no controlled burns, etc).
> This is due to how how the curved earth is distorted when flat map projections are made.
Hm, this seemed wrong as the images looked correct. Using https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTYzMzA1NTk.ODg5NTU3MQ*... I checked myself, and images looks correct, both when comparing the US and Europe with Australia. Am I misunderstanding something?
Believe it or not, it's actually the other way around. People committed and were arrested for the arson before bot campaigns started spreading the narrative that arson had been committed. Between this and the Gizmodo article, it's confusing why news sites are trying to obfuscate the objective fact that people were charged with arson. Who wins here?
The gizmodo article, which was even more egregious and got completely ripped on social media: https://earther.gizmodo.com/its-not-arson-you-absolute-fucki...
"It's not arson, you absolute fucking morons"
93% [I think, something high...] bush-fires are not started by natural causes ... all this climate change rubbish!
The arson narrative is that the arsonists are causing the fires, not climate change. Because, in this world view, everything bad can only have one factor contributing to it's cause.
No one says "yes there is an arson problem but if they didn't start the fire there is a good chance something else would have started a fire in thousands of sq km of bush, and the fact that all the bush is super dry and it's very hot means it is most likely that would start a fire anyway." because that's too long and boring and doesn't fit in a tweet let alone a hash tag.
I am not saying it is not linked to climate change, but to establish scientific evidence to this causal link requires complicated analyses.
Why am I getting downvoted for this? Someone care to explain?
Why are you putting climate change in quotes? Even hardcore paid Oil shills don't deny climate change at this point, they only deny that it's anthropogenic.
The bureau of meteorology even made a pretty infographic showing the effects of climate change: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/history/temperature/
On the main point. Yes, correlation is easy. Causation? I don't know, because I don't work in climate science. Is obvious correlation sufficient to establish causation in climate science?
Causation between human activity and climate change resulting in that temperature anomaly, is fundamentally hard. Especially in a field like climate science where every model carries a big bundle of assumptions some of which are just educated guesses.
But the models for anthropogenic climate change have been pretty bang on at predicting the temperature anomaly that we're seeing today. That doesn't formally prove causation but it's certainly enough evidence that we need to start acting to mitigate climate change now, there's no more 'complicated analysis' needed. At this point it's a bit like arguing over whether hitting the iceberg is really what's making the titanic sink, while standing on the submerging deck.
OK. I got downvoted on this. What is wrong here?
What you're asking is the equivalent of 'is it now established that the deck of the titanic increasingly submerging underwater is caused by it sinking?'.
Like, are you seriously asking whether scientists have looked into whether high temperatures and low rainfall cause dry forests and whether dry forests burn more easily? Do you really think it is a big unsolved question in science whether hot air dries stuff and whether dry stuff burns more easily than wet stuff, and maybe it's actually dry stuff that makes air hot and the fire causes the things to have been less wet before they burned?
Are you saying without climate change, this Australia wildfire would never have happened?
That's not just possible, it is obviously the case. But that's simply the wrong question.
> Are you saying without climate change, this Australia wildfire would never have happened?
No, I am obviously not saying that, and it is again the wrong question.
The whole error here is thinking that there is one single cause. There isn't. Tons of factors contribute to in the end the fires that we are seeing now. As is unavoidably the case in such situations, you essentially never can directly relate any small aspect of the result to any particular causing factor. But that does not make it wrong to say "X caused Y".
Smoking causes lung cancer. It is nonsensical to reply to that "Is it possible some other health factors, other than smoking, cause lung cancer?" or "Are you saying without smoking, we would not have any lung cancer?" Just because it is hypothetically possible that in some random year all lung cancer cases could have causes other than smoking, which we would never know, does not make it wrong to state that smoking causes lung cancer. We know statistically that smoking causes lung cancer, and we know statistically how many lung cancer cases we can avoid by not smoking. Whether any particular case of lung cancer was caused by smoking is simply completely irrelevant.
> While 183 arrests have been made in connection with fires, only 24 people have actually been charged with arson.
There were some cases of arson, including a firefighter starting fires, but most of that number were scenarios of stupidity like deciding to have a campfire or tossing a lit cigarette. The fires started via arson also haven't been the large ones thus far.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-fires-legal-action-taken...
> NSW Police have taken legal action against 183 people so far this bushfire season, including charging 24 people with deliberately lighting bushfires.
> Since November, police have also taken legal action against 53 people for failing to comply with a total fire ban and against 47 people for discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land.
They could solve half the problem just by shutting up.