Previous post
Next post
Peddling Fake News is how ABC News and Hillary Clinton roll. This time they set their sights on the horrendous brush fires decimating several areas in Australia. ABC News decided to use a map to show everyone how bad the fires are.
Nice map isn’t it? Looking at it, one sees that the fire map covers most of the U.S. and portions of Canada. Which leads readers to believe that all of Australia is on fire.
Not so fast. You see, if you don’t go past the headline or neglect to actually READ the article, readers will miss some key information.
“The raging fires in Australia have burned over 12.35 million acres of land — with at least 24 people killed and more than 2,000 homes destroyed by the blazes, officials said.
The size of the fires across the country are twice as large as the state of Maryland and bigger than several other states, including Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New Jersey.
A superimposed map of Australia over the United States shows the hot spots around the country as the massive wildfires have spread Down Under.”
Wait just a minute! The ABC article says that the fires only cover an area that, in the U.S., would only include FIVE states. Five states is a whole lot less than what they are showing. For better perspective.
https://twitter.com/AlexeiPT/status/1214370669141475328
OH. That’s quite a difference. ABC News has kept their story up with the original map, which Vodka Pundit has a screen shot of, just in case. However, they did delete their tweet. That’s something I guess.
Except that misleading maps are now flooding social media. Maps like this.
If you overlaid what’s happening in Australia right now on the US pic.twitter.com/I3LQPT8rh1
— Kyle Hill (@Sci_Phile) January 5, 2020
The wildfires are horrendous, and it will take years and decades for the areas hit to recover. Believe me, I know. In Yellowstone National Park, there is an entire section of forested land that is no longer because of the 1988 fires. All you can see is grass and thousands of burnt trees.
Never mind that. Let’s have ABC News peddle a completely fake map and join in with the chorus of idiot actors who spent their evening at the Golden Globes unknotting their shorts after Ricky Gervais gave them a righteous smack down. What did they do? Among other things, they blamed the fires on climate change.
Hillary Clinton decided to open her yap and drop some stupid as well.
Australia’s bushfire emergency, spurred by climate change, has killed 24 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and led to the loss of an estimated half a billion animals. Here are ways you can help: https://t.co/0oajjMJwIh
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 6, 2020
Hillary, you never ever learn do you? The fires aren’t caused by climate change. Try ARSON as the cause.
“Almost 100 firebugs have deliberately started blazes across Queensland that have destroyed homes and consumed thousands of hectares of bushland.
Some 65 fires continued to burn across the state on Friday, jumping from 55 reported on Thursday, as the fire threat deepened heading into the weekend.
As firefighters remained on high alert, police revealed 103 of the destructive fires that had lashed Queensland since September were deliberately lit.
Figures obtained by AAP revealed police had dealt with 98 people – 31 adults and 67 juveniles – for deliberately setting fires.”
Thousands of animals are being killed and injured because of arsonists. Homes and land have now become ash heaps because of arsonists. And the danger is still ongoing.
But sure! Let’s have the U.S. media, ignorant actors and actresses along with Hillary Clinton peddle Fake News because it fits their narrative.
Lovely bunch of people aren’t they?
Just like the California wildfires in the last few years, placing the blame on climate change for decades of mismanagement is all about choosing narrative over reality, to the detriment of those who have to fight the fires and those who have to deal with the aftermath.
Peddling Fake News only makes the peddlers look like fools. ABC News and Hillary Clinton are in excellent company then.
Welcome Instapundit Readers!
Feature Photo Credit: Pixabay, cropped and modified
GWB says: the fires only cover an area that, in the U.S., would only include FIVE states
No. You were obviously swayed by that map. What they say is that the fires are twice the size of MD, OR they are bigger than VT, OR they are bigger than MA, OR they are bigger than NH, OR they are bigger than NJ. In absolutely no case would it include five states.
The overlay is absolutely silly.
Australia’s area: 2,969,907 sq mi
US’ area: 3,796,742 sq mi
ABC News has kept their story up with the original map
Nope, they’ve changed it. It now has a bunch of little dots on it.
Heh. The power of crowdsourcing critical thinking.
an estimated half a billion animals
Well, if you count the grasshoppers and the rats, maybe.
The standard American media (and Dem politician) approach: scaremongering, information just over the edge from facts, and meaningless information calculated to evoke your emotions. And they wonder why they can’t keep our attention and affection.
Southern Cross says: The major contributing factor is that the greens & other lefties refused permission for Australian State & Federal governments to authorize controlled burns to reduce fuel load . Thus the fires have been catastrophic . Had these back burns been carried out before the fire season ( yes – we do actually have a fire season ) these fires would have , as in the past , been manageable . ABC over paid Chardonnay slurping tool of the left .
Jim says: To add insult to injury Extinction Rebellion are taking the opportunity to try to make political capital out of the fires [as have the Greens and their fellow-travellers] to hold a large and deliberately disruptive – block the centre of Melbourne during peak hour and bang their drums – demonstration on this Friday when all the emergency services including the Police are stretched to the limit as a result of the fire emergency around the State of Victoria, but especially in the South East. In spite of requests from the State Government and Police they have refused to cancel their self-righteous escapade. That Friday is predicted to be 35C or more with a strong hot and dry northerly wind which generally drives bush fires makes their choice to demonstrate that day an absolute insult to all of us living in the country and, especially, those who have been burned out.
I am cynical enough to suspect that some of the ‘warmists’ are delighted that this fire disaster, after a long drought, has occurred so that they can use it to force their socialist objectives. While the greens have never held executive power in Federal or State government they have traded their minority votes to advance their leftist/extreme environmental policies and, in local government, have been able to bring in restrictive laws and regulations affecting the ability of home-owners to clear potentially dangerous trees and bush near their houses.
Bush fires are a normal part of the Australian climate and environment – many Australian native trees have adapted to fire. Each year we cut and graze down all our paddocks and rake up any ‘kindling’ within 100 yards of the house, prime the water pumps and lay out hoses. The major issue is that, as Southern Cross states above, without regular cool burns to clear the underbrush the fires that do occur and will always occur are much hotter and destroy [sterilise] everything.
Interestingly enough my wife [from northern Wisconsin originally] has just told me she has received numerous messages on Facebook from confused/concerned US friends and relatives wondering if we are in immediate danger as they have seen the false fire maps. In fact we live to the west of Melbourne; the worst fires are to the south east. A map of current Victorian fires is shown here at the Country Fire Authority web site which I consult multiple times a day during summer to check if fires have started nearby; it’s a pity Hillary didn’t bother checking this and other State fire service sites:
https://emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/
The map also shows some of the fire sites in New South Wales.
GWB says: block the centre of Melbourne during peak hour and bang their drums
I can’t imagine that the Aussies I knew would let that go over without a… response.
But, I wasn’t ever in one of the big cities (I’ve been to Cairns and Brisbane).
Jim says: The present State Government is Labor-socialist. When the Labor party came to power the previous ‘move on’ laws that allowed Policed to break up unruly and/or disruptive demonstrations were repealed. The general consensus is that the militant unions which ‘own’ the Australian Labor Party didn’t like the laws as said laws restricted their ability to flex their industrial muscle on the streets.
GWB says: Well, I wasn’t talking about the police “moving them on”.
But, when I visited was also 20+ years ago.
Jim says: The green protesters claim they don’t need a Police presence during their demonstration. I suspect their welfare is the primary concern of the Police as the locals were pretty angry last time the streets were blocked during peak hours by the caring and sharing demonstrators; it could have escalated with the greens on the receiving end of a good thumping. Now they are demonstrating during an actual crisis and people are pretty angry about that.
Sandy says: Jim: Ex-wife, a gal from Brooklyn, called last night, fearful I’d been burned to a crisp. When I reminded her of the times we drove down the Princes Sydney to Melbourne, she remembered the thick, unburned bush I pointed out to her. Then she ‘got it’.
This post’s focus on arson is somewhat misplaced. A lot of those charged were doing nothing worse than running a BBQ (still a damn stupid thing to do on a total-fire-ban day). The real arsonists, about 30 of those charged, are often stupid kids — but it doesn’t really matter what ignites the fire because, sooner or later, a lightning strike or somesuch will kick one off.
And here’s the thing: it the greenies with their absurd conception of “wilderness”, which hasn’t existed on this continent since the Aborigines got here 50,000 years ago and changed everything by burning the landscape. If the greenies, were told to piss off by politicians, the fuel-reduction burning would be more extensive and the threat hugely reduced. This is the case in Western Australia, where they still have fires but much less severe ones.
In the eastern states, where both conservative and labor governments court greens by rabbiting on about climate emergencies and angry summers and all the other crap the warmists extrude, the bush goes proactively unburned. Then fires come and people die.
If you want to understand Australian unique eucalyptus-driven fire ecology, policies and mismanagement of the bush, I’d recommend the book “Inferno: The Day Victoria Burned”, which details the last big fires we had back in 2009 when 173 were killed in a single afternoon.
Read that and, if you ever get to Australia, you’ll want to surf at Bondi, hug a koala, drink Melbourne coffee — and punch a greenie in the nose.
bobby b says: At last count, they’ve arrested nearly 200 people for setting the fires.
A concerted effort to fake a climate crisis?
Tatterdemalian says: Not just arsonists. coordinated and orchestrated arsonists, with someone in charge giving the orders and preparing the talking points for the media. Clearly someone literally willing to burn Australia down to prove themselves right about something they are wrong about.
Sendarius says: About that “decades to recover” thing: probably not.
The Australian bush is uniquely adapted to fire. Many of the larger plants NEED fire to germinate seeds, and the rate at which they recover from fire is astonishing.
I lived at the border of a National Park in Western Australia for twenty years, and within two years of a major fire, the bush-land outside my back fence was verdant, vigorous, and teeming with wildlife. Sure there was evidence that a fire had occurred, with charred and blackened tree trunks, and greatly reduced under-story “trash”, but for the most part it was as if the fire had never happened.
Ann in L.A. says: Look to the issue of non-native plant species as well. WattsUpWithThat recently had a couple of articles on how that is fueling fires in the US, and a quick search pulls up similar worries in Australia. Native species in both places evolved to handle fire season, but non-native plants have different life cycles and can become overgrown. When they die, they leave more fuel than native species.
From WattsUpWithThat:
>>Invading annual grasses germinate earlier in the season and deprive the later-germinating native grasses of needed moisture. These foreign grasses die after setting seed, leaving highly flammable fuels that can burn much earlier in the year and thus extend the fire season. [ wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/23/why-worse-wildfires-part-1/ ]<<
12 Comments