
Australia's Wildfires Spark Disinformation Battle as They Take a Tragic Toll - frereubu
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/10/795218092/australias-wildfires-spark-disinformation-battle-as-they-take-a-tragic-toll
======
polemic
You can see examples of the kinda of disinformation right here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22012427](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
*may be the primary factor

~~~
sanarothe
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.

------
keanzu
_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...](https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/news_article?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGZWJpenByZC5wb2xpY2UubnN3Lmdvdi5hdSUyRm1lZGlhJTJGODIyNjQuaHRtbCZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D)

Source: NSW Police official webpage

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

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2020/jan/08/polic...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2020/jan/08/police-contradict-claims-spread-online-exaggerating-arsons-
role-in-australian-bushfires)

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."

~~~
keanzu
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.

~~~
cam_l
Yes, it is a good example of misinformation.

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.

~~~
keanzu
> It expressly does consider, but did not get a response from the NSW police.

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?

~~~
cam_l
>I read the article twice

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...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-20/bushfire-ignition-
source-how-we-know/11701132)

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.

~~~
keanzu
> Why did you and everyone else reciting these stats leave the qualifying
> comment out?

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.

~~~
cam_l
Ok, so I see you are reading this very differently to me, and appreciate your
alternate point of view. I just do not believe it says what you think it says.
I personally see no reason to give the NSW police the benefit of doubt,
particularly when they are using obfuscating language, and have not enlarged
further with any media outlets. (Not even to mention they do not have a great
track record of truth with the media.) That being said, I believe they are
right to call out arson as a major contributing factor to bushfire, but using
those figures, and using that as an explanation for the current fires, I
believe, crosses the line into misinformation. And I believe this was their
intent.

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...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/nov/21/how-australias-
bushfires-spread-mapping-the-nsw-and-queensland-fires)

------
AdamN
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
Why?

~~~
ceejayoz
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.

------
keanzu
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
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.

~~~
keanzu
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](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50951043)

------
jdoliner
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.

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

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

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
And what is the cause of the difference in the amount of damage now vs. then?
(Hint: It's not the arson.)

------
nostromo
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](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-51020564)

~~~
capableweb
> 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*...](https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTYzMzA1NTk.ODg5NTU3MQ*MjI1NzE4NDU\(MTE0NzEyNTk~!AU*MTQ0NjUzNjU.MTI4Nzg2Nzg\)NA)
I checked myself, and images looks correct, both when comparing the US and
Europe with Australia. Am I misunderstanding something?

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

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

------
creaghpatr
>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...](https://earther.gizmodo.com/its-not-arson-you-absolute-fucking-
morons-1840862475)

"It's not arson, you absolute fucking morons"

~~~
quickthrower2
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.

~~~
datashow
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?

~~~
missosoup
You need complicated analysis to correlate the prolonged drought and all-time
record breaking heat to climate change?

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/](http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/history/temperature/)

~~~
datashow
What? I never noticed I put those quotes... Weird. I just removed the quotes.
...

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?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
So, your suggestion is that the dry forests cause climate change? Or is it the
fires? Or does a common cause cause climate change and dry forests and fires,
but the forests drying out has nothing to do with temperatures?

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?

~~~
datashow
Is it possible some other climate factors, other than climate change, caused
dry forests and fires?

Are you saying without climate change, this Australia wildfire would never
have happened?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> Is it possible some other climate factors, other than climate change, caused
> dry forests and fires?

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.

~~~
datashow
But we are talking about the specific case here, aren't we?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
No, we are talking about hundreds of fires.

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

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

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

------
tick_tock_tick
And Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.....

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

They could solve half the problem just by shutting up.

