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[Iscah]

Heres a sample, starting in November and running until current. Theres more stories, but several sources are paywalled.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50568026
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-...fires/11717444
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...a6d53c66391516
https://twitter.com/7NewsSydney/stat...ting-bushfires
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/austra...tarters-in-nsw

Current speculation is that 85% of the fires in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania have been arson, and a few of the remainder are accidental due to cigarettes. This includes 183 arson arrests and more detained on suspicion.

I didn't see any of those statistics in the articles I read.


The articles you linked aren't all relating to the current fires either, and show how easily we can count to "24 charges of arson" without it necessarily being a major cause of the fires that are happening right now. (And as I understand it, three people in one incident would be "three charges".)

From what I can gather, the actual charge seems to cover any deliberately lit destructive fire, regardless of the intent.

(The quote boxes are not quotes as such, just organising my notes.)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50568026

- one man charged with seven counts of alleged arson since October
- "the man is not accused over [major bushfires]", but it put more strain on firefighters already fighting those fires.
- not outright stated in the article, but it sounds like those particular fires were put out, or they probably would have mentioned it led to a major fire.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-...fires/11717444

- 18 people have been "dealt with by police" in the state of Queensland regarding the recent fires, 10 of them children or teenagers

- over the past two years, a total of 136 children have been charged with deliberately lighting fires of some kind, although only 18 were convicted

- yearly numbers of 22, 88, 48 charges

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...a6d53c66391516

* The Australian is a "right-wing" newspaper and is unlikely to be attributing the increased fire risk to climate change.

In any case, the article talks about the NSW police being "set to charge more than a dozen suspected arsonists" - which is well within the stated total of 24 - plus 56 "charges or cautions" since August.

In combination with the previous article saying there were 136 charges but only 18 convictions, I gather there's no guarantee every "charge" is in fact a valid case.

https://twitter.com/7NewsSydney/stat...ting-bushfires

Two links for the price of one, and (along with The Australian) I seem to have given traffic to people I'd rather not.
The tweet is from Seven News, but the URL indicates a redirect from "Zero Hedge" (which Wikipedia tells me "has been associated with alt-right views") and the URL "nearly 200 people arrested across Australia deliberately starting bushfires".

Call me a poor journalist but it's too late at night and I don't fancy giving them any more traffic actually investigating that link, which I would assume to be one of the misinformation-articles that the ABC was warning against.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/austra...tarters-in-nsw

More about the nature of arsonists, with an interesting quote (that I thought might be a statistic but didn't know where to look) - "estimates up to half the 54,000 bushfires that hit Australia on average each year are deliberately lit or suspicious."

Note the maximum level of hyperbole - "estimates", "up to", "suspicious" (but not confirmed)... but still.

54,000 fires a year.

Assuming that statistic is accurate (it might be counting very small and unremarkable incidents), even if it was only 10% or 5% rather than "up to half", that would still mean every year thousands of fires of some degree are deliberately lit - so why is this year different?

Deliberately lit fires are (regrettably) nothing new. The people who would do such a thing haven't all come out of nowhere since last year.

The issue is that the climate right now is producing conditions where fires - however they started - are becoming more destructive and harder to fight.

I am in no way trying to absolve them. It's a monstrous thing that someone would willingly start a fire.

But at the same time, we can't just say "this year's disaster is because of arsonists". We have them every year, but we do not have these conditions and this degree of catastrophe.