Australia's Wildfires Spark Disinformation Battle as They Take a Tragic Toll

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/10/795218092/australias-wildfires-spark-disinformation-battle-as-they-take-a-tragic-toll

by frereubu • 7 years ago

77 77 7 years ago

creaghpatr• 7 years ago

Around the same time the bot campaign hit its crescendo, news stories about the wildfires also touted a police report in hard-hit New South Wales, where authorities recently announced that they have taken legal action against more than 180 people for fire-related offenses.

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"

ceejayoz5• 7 years ago

Hang on, you're both right, and you're both wrong. Gizmodo's making the point that there weren't 180 charged with arson.

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.

quickthrower2• 7 years ago

I was tuned into 2GB and heard Alan Jones make the argument, (no surprises here):

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.

datashow6• 7 years ago

Even if we accept "all the bush is super dry and it's very hot means it is most likely that would start a fire anyway", this is still far from linking the fires to climate change.

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?

keanzu8• 7 years ago

Police take legal action against more than 180 people so far during 2019/2020 bushfire season

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.

https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/news_article?sq_content_s...

Source: NSW Police official webpage

cam_l6• 7 years ago

Great example of the kind of misinformation this article is talking about.

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."

keanzu8• 7 years ago

Misinformation? A verbatim partial copy of the police force's official statement with a link to the original source? I'm reasonably confident that a Guardian article titled "Police contradict claims spread online exaggerating arson's role in Australian bushfires" does not consider the NSW police official website as exaggerated online claims which the police are contracting. It is a police source, if they think their own website is providing false information they can take it down.

fooblitzky• 7 years ago

To put it into perspective, about 1% of the bushfires in Australia this season were caused by arson: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/australias-fires-reve...

keanzu8• 7 years ago

To put it into perspective: "Only about 1 per cent of the land burnt in NSW this bushfire season can be officially attributed to arson"

"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.

jdoliner2• 7 years ago

Articles like this are the disinformation campaign, they go on for 8 paragraphs before they admit that it's true that 180 people have been charged with fire related offenses, including arson. If they want to argue that arson isn't an emergency, and isn't the real issue that's one thing. But claiming it's a disinformation claim is just, well, disinformation if there are actual confirmed cases of arson.

ceejayoz5• 7 years ago

The best disinformation campaigns have enough of a kernel of truth to survive or resist an initial look.

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.

tclancy• 7 years ago

Why wasn't it an emergency before these wider fires then?

jdoliner2• 7 years ago

Because the emergency is the amount of damage the fires are doing and wider fires do more damage.

markdown• 7 years ago

There are confirmed cases of arson all the time. This has been a problem for decades.

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).

keanzu8• 7 years ago

The ignition source for a bushfire isn't relevant. What creates the necessary conditions for severe bushfire? Long periods of hot and dry weather leads directly to large amounts of easily combustible material - fire danger ratings and total fire bans are issued on this basis.

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.

throwaway3563• 7 years ago

Exactly. With all the dry vegetation in place and ongoing drought, a dry lightning strike eventually would have done the same thing an arsonist didn’t.

keanzu8• 7 years ago

Eventually? Probably did do the same thing. There are hundreds of individual fires across the country thousands of kilometers apart. With so many fires there were likely a lot of different ignition sources, lightning easily could have been one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50951043

tick_tock_tick• 7 years ago

And Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.....

nostromo• 7 years ago

I've seen a lot more misinformation spreading about the scope of the wildfires than I have about any arson narrative.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-51020564

capableweb• 7 years ago

As some Twitter users pointed out, maps that claim to show the size of the affected area by "overlaying" Australia on to other continents like North America and Europe are not completely accurate.
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?

merlincorey• 7 years ago

You are missing the nuances of various map projections[0], perhaps.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection

htfu• 7 years ago

Likely depends on what you're reading - look at the cloud in TFA. I take it Prisonplanet and donaldjtrumpjr probably aren’t your go-to sources?

AdamN• 7 years ago

The ignition source is really not relevant, that's the final step in a long chain and will happen naturally at some point. We should just disregard the arson narrative entirely (not that it shouldn't be punished, just that it's not an independent variable to be discussed).

caiobegotti• 7 years ago

Why?

supercanuck2• 7 years ago

because ...

.The ignition source is really not relevant, that's the final step in a long chain and will happen naturally at some point.

ceejayoz5• 7 years ago

Because arson isn't a key factor in the overall problem; it's basically background noise. If you used a time machine to remove the arsonists from the timeline, Australia would still be in a horrible fire season this year.

Cougher2• 7 years ago

"Climate change is going to start fires eventually, so let's just ignore what happened and claim that what happened isn't what happened but what's gonna happen happened."

woggy2• 7 years ago

You missed the 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.

aphextim2• 7 years ago

The ignition source is really not relevant, that's the final step in a long chain and will happen naturally at some point.

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."

ceejayoz5• 7 years ago

One of the arsonists caught was a firefighter, who's presumably plenty educated on the risks of starting a fire.

The problem with arsonists starting fires isn't education, it's crazy people, and you'll never completely get rid of crazy people.

hinkley4• 7 years ago

Haven't we had fires caused by people driving their vehicle through dry grass and the cat is hot enough to ignite it?

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.

polemic3• 7 years ago

You can see examples of the kinda of disinformation right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22012427

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.

WanderPanda• 7 years ago

*may be the primary factor

sanarothe• 7 years ago

If root cause analysis isn't conclusive, you don't just not implement corrective actions... You act on the most likely contributing causes with no undue delay.

AWildC182• 7 years ago

Why? What could possibly be bad about just accepting this as the cause instead of running around trying to add an asterisk to everything?

hinkley4• 7 years ago

In the US we are still dealing with the legacy of bad fire management that dates back a century. It's certainly likely that what we needed to do then and what we need to do now are two different things, but the fact is we've been handling things badly for a very long time.

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?

polemic3• 7 years ago

I don't have answers, because I'm not an Australian bush fire expert.

We need to get past the idea that we can reason this out with faux-rational arguments on message boards.

cam_l6• 7 years ago

The projected rise in funding was cut, and then largely reinstated. There are also some other complications around funding which allows both sides to claim it was/wasn't cut do to firefighter entitlements. But broadly, there was not only no cut, it was increased in line with previous years.

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.

Brakenshire• 7 years ago

I don’t think it’s wrong to blame forest management in part, the problem is the clear motivated reasoning to exclusively put forward any other reason which allows the commenter to exclude climate change as a major driver.

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.

manicdee• 7 years ago

Places that were burned off in hazard reduction burns a few months ago are burning again. Forest management meant nothing to this fire, it was consuming stuff that was already burned. Blackened dead trees were erupting into flame. The dirt was on fire. There’s no managing around that.

What our head fire fighters were saying was simply that they needed more money for equipment and training more volunteers.

Khaine• 7 years ago

The last really bad fire to go through Canberra was in 2003[1],[3].[4]. This fire had the first documented case of a fire tornado in Australia. It was calculated to have horizontal winds of 250 km/h (160 mph) and vertical air speed of 150 km/h (93 mph), spawned by its own wind rotation from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud and causing the flashover of 120 hectares (300 acres) in 0.04 seconds.

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.

agumonkey• 7 years ago

Their beds are burning

mieses3• 7 years ago

Rural fire chiefs might be saying such things to secure funding from indoctrinated green technocrats.

bufferout• 7 years ago

Or you could be propogating a conspiracy theory. Hard to say without cited evidence.

moomin2• 7 years ago

Gotta love this worldview that the one thing that cannot possibly ever have a negative effect is policy making.

mieses3• 7 years ago

moomin, you might enjoy the "The Fillyjonk Who Believed In Disasters" if you haven't read it already.

moomin2• 7 years ago

That is a rather excellent piece of work and a great example of "Jansson wrote children's stories for adults."

vanniv• 7 years ago

NPR itself is one of the major sources of disinformation on this issue.

They could solve half the problem just by shutting up.

Australia's Wildfires Spark Disinformation Battle as They Take a Tragic Toll

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