As the wildfires continue to rage in Australia, Rupert Murdoch's media empire is deliberately spreading misinformation that confuses and spreads blame for the fires to arsonists instead of climate change. The Australian, Murdoch's flagship paper is telling its readers more than 200 people have been arrested in connection with the fires. Further reporting by others has put the actual number of perpetrators as more like 2 dozen people or fewer. Even if arsonists started some of the fires, the doomsday aspect remains. More bushland has burned so far this season than the last 15 years together.
This is the kind of insidious damage being promulgated by climate change deniers in Australia and being picked up by the usual suspects in the US media who use the arsonist story to divert attention from the real and present danger the fires represent. Unfortunately this kind of misinformation will continue until denial is untenable. Then we will be told we really can't do anything to mitigate climate change and we had best accept this hell on earth as the new normal.
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