We seem to have an either/or from climate change quibblers that bushfires were caused by arson or fuel load. The PM evidently leans to the latter but he may have snookered himself. That's because he has quoted emissions statistics that make a deduction (about 20 Mt in 2018) for land use changes. The bushfires in recent weeks were thought to have added about 400 Mt CO2. If prescribed burns go major in future years that will also add to emissions. That's an own goal for the PM.

Right on about social media: voting trends do not reflect the nonsense spouted on Twitter and Facebook. It's a pity that the cheaper sort of politician, who also tweets, doesn't realise this.

As for the 'fake' news about arson, criminologists have found that almost 40% of bushfires are caused by arsonists

Well that was a lot of words to say not much.

Bot swarm bad. Sure.

Both sides of the debate use them. Sure.

The 200 arsonists story was widely propagated through social media despite valiant attempts to correct the record.

I hadn't heard the line that they were deliberately lit in order to push AGW but okay.

But in the end somehow the author finishes by bashing the 'greens'. So the distortions continue whatever the medium.

Some folk believe the Russians tried to buy the U.S. Elections?

Only the willfully ignorant believe this is not so and that the Russian are busy interfering in the elections of sovereign nations, ditto the Chinese and as interference all over the place universities and elsewhere, the pages of social media and anywhere there is division they can exploit! As exampled so beautifully in the article! And before you go bananas, if the cap fits?

Did climate change cause the bushfires and the terrible damage?

Well no, but without question, it did contribute to the extreme severity and unprecedented loss of property and life. Extreme and enduring drought the worst in living memory and killer heatwave conditions, all occurring during a waning phase of the sun when the opposite ought to have been the literal case!

And the subsequent drying out of wetland and rainforest that previously for over sixty thousand years acted as natural fire breaks!

Simply denying causal factors means they are never ever addressed and can be without ever once harming the environment or the economy but rather the very opposite and turbocharge on steroids

So genius, let me pose this question! WTF is your objections to the economic turbocharge that is part of the solution? And laid out in chapter and verse in previous commentary on similar threads.

Wouldn't please your mate Mr Putin who clearly wants not only the opposite but socially engineered division!

To reiterate, if the cap fits?
Alan B.

Intelligent people will applaud this article because they have common sense, the educated will denounce it because they lack common sense !

After the '67 Tasmanian bushfires an American news service released a story along the lines of An island south of Australia was devastated by fires and the remaining survivors were rescued by an American naval vessel.

The more things change..