Name: Australia fires: Debunking 'arson emergency' claims - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T18:55:04.000Z
Duration: 5 min 29 s
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Now we talk about the scale of the Australian bushfires.

Every day over 20 people have been killed.

Hundreds of millions of animals to more than eight million hectares have been burned.

There's an economic cost to part of that is the impact on tourism.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, turned to that today.

Australia is I pinned Australia stool, a wonderful place to come and bring your family and enjoy your holidays.

We made these comments on a visit to Kangaroo Island, just off the south coast.

It's a haven for wildlife and a popular tourist attraction.

To and from this image you get an idea of how extensive the devastation has bean.

The fires have struck twice on the island, and 1/3 of the island has bean burned.

That inevitably means animals, including koalas, have bean killed or badly injured.

And the island is home to several endangered species, including the egg in it and also the glossy back Kaka.

To now, it's feared many of these have been killed or injured, and even those animals which have survived may have lost their habitat.

Now the fires on this particular island was started with lightning strikes and they're part of a much, much broader problem all over Australia.

As we know, the brunt of these fires has been born by New South Wales and Victoria in the Southeast.

And unfortunately, more hot, dry weather is forecast now.

One tactic that's being used to control the burning is this.

This is a firefighter in Victoria, deliberately lighting small fires in scrub that's believed to be high risk.

The idea is that you reduce available fuel for when the main fires come through his Katie Watson.

With one farmer in the hills of Victoria, Farmer Chris is holding his breath.

Fires have already scorched much of his land, and there's real danger that existing bushfires further north could merge and create one big mega plays.

As the crow flies, it's probably about 70 right.

It sounds like a long way in the forest, but two hours and could be portals, Chris says.

More Bush land needs to be burnt in a controlled manner to stop fires getting out of hand.

It's the lack of fuel reduction burns, which is causing these intense mega fires.

The issue off these mega fires is gone away.

But all of that said the authorities were clear that fuel reduction alone doesn't fix the problem.

Remember, this is what Victoria's Fire chief said this week.

The reality is we've had fired and the landscape here that has had Boone's go right through it and it hasn't slowed it up.

It'll and so emotive argument is not supported that fuel reduction burning on a large scale will fix all our problems.

And here's the commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

We we actually work through a sensible environmental regime.

Out priorities are life, property and and then environment ranks third.

So so we have streamline processes and I can say in any given year, awful the burns that we've got ready to go 70 or 80% I cleared environmentally ready to guy were just waiting for the window of opportunity.

Now, even putting clips of our Australia coverage on the BBC news YouTube channel on Twitter to and we keep getting messages from people claiming the story of these fires isn't climate change, it's arson.

Here's an example of someone taking up the issue, saying it's not dozens of firebugs.

It's hundreds climate activists and lighting fires in a desperate bid to amp up climate change fear.

And we know that the hashtag Arsene emergency is being widely used.

One researcher analyzed over 300 accounts using this hashtag he found 1/3 of them displayed highly automated inauthentic behaviour, meaning they could be bots or trolls.

And he concluded, the conspiracy theories going around including arson, is the main cause of the fires.

Reflecting increased distrust in expertise and skepticism in the media, he says, is all major factors and different information.

It appears that Australia has, for better or worse, entered that battlefield.

Now some of these tweets share arts calls like this.

It claims that almost 200 arsonists have bean arrested, go into the ask all the figure is actually 183 but that includes minor offenses like breaching a total fire ban.

That could be something like using machinery on a hot day, not deliberately lighting a fire, please.

In New South Wales say the number of people actually charged with deliberately lighting a fire is not 183 for 24 even less of them managed to start large fires on on this subject.

You could listen to the authorities and Victoria say there's currently no intelligence to indicate that the fires and he's Gippsland in the Northeast.

That's the worst Fires in the state have been caused by arson or any other suspicious behavior.

And it's also worth emphasizing that the main issue here is hotter, drier weather.

Meteorologists have long been warning the long term trend of rising temperatures in Australia across the last century would impact bushfires, and it could be a good idea to read this from 2008 and Independent Report commissioned by the Australian government, that proved to be remarkably accurate.

 It told US Fire seasons will start earlier and slightly later, and generally b'more intense. 