Chapter 2 Online Text as Data
In this section, we’ll start to use the information around us – the books we might read, the news that we consume, the tweets and webpages that we view – as data.
2.1 Working with dataframes in R
Before jumping into online text analyses, it is necessary that we understand a bit more about how to work with data in R. Most of the time, we’ll be working with dataframes, which are \(m \cdot n\) objects with \(m\) rows (typically observations) and \(n\) columns (typically variables). We’ll start by creating a simple dataframe. We’ll call our variables “year” and “temp,” although of course these are just fake temperatures.
# create a dataframe (note that : returns a sequence between the numbers, by 1)
df <- data.frame(year = 2000:2020, temp = 40:60)
# look at the first 6 rows
head(df)## year temp
## 1 2000 40
## 2 2001 41
## 3 2002 42
## 4 2003 43
## 5 2004 44
## 6 2005 45Great! Let’s say, however, that our temperatures are in Celsius, and we want them in Fahrenheit. We can write a function to do this, and implement it in our dataframe.
library(dplyr)
# function to get from C to F
c_to_f <- function(c){
f <- 9/5*c+32
return(f)
}
# run function on temperature variable to create new variable
df %>%
mutate(temp_f = c_to_f(temp)) %>%
head() ## year temp temp_f
## 1 2000 40 104.0
## 2 2001 41 105.8
## 3 2002 42 107.6
## 4 2003 43 109.4
## 5 2004 44 111.2
## 6 2005 45 113.0There’s a lot going in there. First, mutate() is how one would normally create or modify variables within the dplyr framework in R. This is generally what we will use to do so.
Second, what was going on with the %>%? The code that we just ran is equivalent to head(mutate(temp_f = c_to_f(temp))). You can try running them both yourself. So why make it more complicated? For this small example, it doesn’t really matter. But, as we run more and more complicated code, we will probably want to run multiple functions on a dataframe (or vector, or something else) at once. It can get confusing to nest these within the function commands. For example:
So instead, we opt for the dplyr method, which is written as follows:
This is usually a bit easier for the reader to understand. That being said, dplyr is specific to R, so if you use other languages it may be important to learn other standards of communicating code. As always, remember that our code is language, and that there are multiple ways to communicate most statements, but that we want to make our code as easily interpretable as possible.
Why %>%? This is what is called a pipe. It pipes whatever is before the %>% into the function that follows %>%. This concept is vital to our coding, so let’s make sure that we understand how this is working.
# first, let's write a simple function
add_2 <- function(x){
return(x+2)
}
# check that it is working
add_2(5)## [1] 7## [1] 7## [1] 9Most of the time, we will be applying functions to vectors and dataframes, rather than individual numbers, as we did in the first example. So let’s go take another look at our dataframe.
## year temp
## 1 2000 40
## 2 2001 41
## 3 2002 42
## 4 2003 43
## 5 2004 44
## 6 2005 45Oh no! The column we created, temp_f, has disappeared … what happened? When we ran the earlier function, we temporarily created a new variable within df, but we did not permanently change df. So how would we permanently change df? There are a couple ways.
library(magrittr)
# first, we can assign the mutated dataframe to itself
df <- df %>%
mutate(temp_f = c_to_f(temp))
# second, we can use the magrittr pipe to do it all at once
df %<>%
mutate(temp_f = c_to_f(temp))
# check that either of these methods worked (we didn't really need to run them both)
head(df)## year temp temp_f
## 1 2000 40 104.0
## 2 2001 41 105.8
## 3 2002 42 107.6
## 4 2003 43 109.4
## 5 2004 44 111.2
## 6 2005 45 113.0Notice the magrittr pipe, %<>%. This is generally what I will use when performing operations on a dataframe, and I recommend that you do so as well! As a side note, there is another pipe, |>, which is another version of %>%, and is mostly functionally equivalent. However, sometimes the magrittr pipe only works with %>%! For this reason, we will mostly use %>% and %<>% in this class, but you are free to try other things in your code. New versions of these operations are common, so there may be other ways to do this that I am unaware of! The goal is to stay flexible and understand the rationale behind these commands. I recommend trying all these out now to make sure you are comfortable with them.
2.2 Newspapers & Books
We will start our journey to analyzing text data with some classic sources: books and newspapers. Luckily for us, there are massive databases of these types of text.
We can start with the gutenbergr R package. We can load this package and read in a book from this list, most of which are in the public domain. We’ll try a 1913 book called “Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation.”
#install.packages("gutenbergr")
library(gutenbergr)
# download the book - notice that the number is taken from the gutenberg website
vanishing_wl <- gutenberg_download(c(13249), meta_fields = "title")Great! The book contains a lot of information on birds and other animals that have gone extinct, like this passenger pigeon:
But what can we actually do with the text? First, let’s take a look at the first 50 rows.
| gutenberg_id | text | title |
|---|---|---|
| 13249 | “I know no way of judging of the Future but by the Past.” | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | –Patrick Henry. | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | REPORT | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | of a select committee of the Senate of Ohio, in 1857, on a bill proposed | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | to protect the passenger pigeon. | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 |
| |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | “The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here to-day and elsewhere | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | to-morrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | from the myriads that are yearly produced.” | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | “The snipe (Scolopax wilsonii) needs no protection…. The snipe, too, | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | like the pigeon, will take care of itself, and its yearly numbers can | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | not be materially lessened by the gun.” | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | [Illustration: THE LAST LIVING PASSENGER PIGEON ] | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 |
| |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | THE FOLLY OF 1857 AND THE LESSON OF 1912 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 |
| |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | OUR VANISHING | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | WILD LIFE | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | ITS | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | EXTERMINATION AND PRESERVATION | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | BY | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | WILLIAM T. HORNADAY, Sc.D. | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK; | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | AUTHOR OF “THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY”; | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | EX-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN BISON SOCIETY | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | “Hew to the line! Let the chips fall where they will.”–Old Exhortation. | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | “Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.”–Othello. | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
| 13249 | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation | |
| 13249 | NEW YORK | Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation |
It’s a bit of a mess! But that’s alright, we can clean it up. We’ll start by using the unnest_tokens() function from the tidytext package (remember that you need to install and library this package before using it!). We will also use the dplyr package, which I’ll elaborate on below. The first argument in unnest_tokens(), word, means we want to create a new variable called “word.” The second argument, text, means we want to use the old variable called “text.”
library(tidytext)
library(dplyr)
# try to tokenize into single words
vanishing_wl %>%
unnest_tokens(word, text)## # A tibble: 181,050 × 3
## gutenberg_id title word
## <int> <chr> <chr>
## 1 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… _i
## 2 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… know
## 3 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… no
## 4 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… way
## 5 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… of
## 6 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… judg…
## 7 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… of
## 8 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… the
## 9 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… futu…
## 10 13249 Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservati… but
## # ℹ 181,040 more rowsIt’s still a bit of a mess! Maybe even more so. But we are on our way to organizing this dataframe. Notice that in the “text” column, each row contains just one word now, rather than chunks of sentences. We will run this code again with the magrittr pipe to permanently change vanishing_wl.
Great! Now we can do things like look at the frequency of word lengths:
library(stringr)
# table of wordlengths in vanishing_wl
vanishing_wl$word %>%
str_length() %>%
table()## .
## 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
## 4677 31412 37517 31772 20981 15954 13749 9316 7103 4148 2225 1387 641
## 14 15 16 17 18 20
## 105 52 7 2 1 1So we see that the majority of words have between 2 and 5 letters, which is probably what we would expect. This is not super interesting, but it’s always good to do data checks like this to catch if anything is seriously wrong! Notice that the $ sign tells the dataframe that we want to select a particular variable, or vector. We could also have used the select() command from dplyr.
Next, we can search for the frequency of particular words or parts of words. For example, maybe we want to know how times the book mentions “law” or “policy.” The “|” symbol below denotes “or.”
# count of words that contain "law"
vanishing_wl %>%
filter(word == "law" | word == "policy") %>%
count(word, sort = T)## # A tibble: 2 × 2
## word n
## <chr> <int>
## 1 law 331
## 2 policy 14We notice that the book mentions “law” 331 times, but only mentions “policy” 14 times. Try running similar code on your own to look at other words! You can use str_starts() and str_ends() to capture words that start or end with certain strings (groups of letters).
2.3 APIs
Application Program Interfaces, or APIs, are tools that allow researchers to pull data from websites. I won’t go into too much about what an API is doing or how it works, but you can learn more about this in one of the problem set videos.
Lists of APIs that may be useful for social science research can be found here and here. Many of these would be great sources of data for a final project.
Let’s start with pulling data from the Google Trends API. You might have used the Google Trends Interface directly before. Lucky for us, there’s an R package that can pull this information directly into our environment.
Great, now let’s look at a couple trends. We’ll start with the frequency that people are searching for “hurricane” and “wildfire.”
Notice that this returns a list of multiple dataframes and terms. We can explore these by typing hur_wf$. Also note the different parameters that we can set. When we specify c(), this is a simple way to define a one-dimensional vector of numerical or text entries. There are other options that we didn’t specify here, which are evaluated at their default levels. For example, the default time period for these trends is “today+5-y”, which means the last 5 years (you can see this by running ?gtrendsR).
The package comes with a built-in capability for plotting time trends. We can look at these trends with the following code:
Woah, people search for hurricanes way more than wildfires! Is this surprising? We can also look at the timing of searches: do spikes roughly correlate to major hurricanes and wildfires in the U.S.? I encourage you to run this on your own, and investigate!
Next, we might want to use Google Trends to evaluate searches for ideas over time. For example, we can examine searches for “climate change” in different states.
Notice that we can specify states within the U.S. We can also specify Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) if we want to. When we plot these time trends, the different states appear in different colors.
In all three states (Arizona, California, and New York), searches for climate change spike around September 2019, April 2022, and April 2023. Any ideas for why these spikes occur? On your own, I encourage you to play around a bit more with the other parameters in the gtrends() function and see if you can find any interesting phenomena.
We’ve seen one example of an API that runs straight out of an R package, no registration or setup required. However, most take a bit more work on the front end. To get a sense of what this can look like, we’ll try using the API for the newspaper The Guardian.
First, we’ll need a key to access the API. You can obtain one here by clicking “Register for a Developer Key.”
Next, we can install and library the guardianapi R package. There is another R package, “guardian” which also works with this API, but it is not on CRAN, so it is a little trickier to set up. It is often the case that multiple R packages can perform a single task, so we may want to try the other one if we are running into difficulties.
You will also need to run the gu_api_key() command and enter your API key. The Guardian API will let us pull the full newspaper text from Guardian articles within topics and date ranges that we specify. For example, we can pull articles on the recent Canadian wildfires and smoke in New York City with the following code:
ca_wf <- gu_content('"Canada" AND "wildfire" AND "smoke" AND "air quality" AND "New York City"',
from_date = "2023-06-01")Let’s take a look at what’s in our dataframe.
## # A tibble: 6 × 41
## id type section_id section_name web_publication_date web_title web_url
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dttm> <chr> <chr>
## 1 world/20… arti… world World news 2023-06-12 02:25:58 Poor air… https:…
## 2 us-news/… arti… us-news US news 2023-06-08 17:08:23 Tens of … https:…
## 3 sport/20… arti… sport Sport 2023-06-08 03:36:13 US sport… https:…
## 4 world/20… arti… world World news 2023-06-10 00:06:29 Millions… https:…
## 5 us-news/… arti… us-news US news 2023-06-09 01:00:37 New York… https:…
## 6 world/20… arti… world World news 2023-06-07 22:32:29 ‘Out of … https:…
## # ℹ 34 more variables: api_url <chr>, tags <lgl>, is_hosted <lgl>,
## # pillar_id <chr>, pillar_name <chr>, headline <chr>, standfirst <chr>,
## # trail_text <chr>, byline <chr>, main <chr>, body <chr>, wordcount <dbl>,
## # first_publication_date <dttm>, is_inappropriate_for_sponsorship <lgl>,
## # is_premoderated <lgl>, last_modified <dttm>, production_office <chr>,
## # publication <chr>, short_url <chr>, should_hide_adverts <lgl>,
## # show_in_related_content <lgl>, thumbnail <chr>, legally_sensitive <lgl>, …We notice there are lots of variables! We can take a closer look at a few by using the select() function. For example, you could run the following code to view what we see in the table below:
| headline | byline | web_publication_date | body_text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poor air quality returns to US north-east from Canada wildfires | Maya Yang | 2023-06-12 02:25:58 | Poor air quality returned to the north-east US on Sunday, although it was nowhere near as bad as the heavy haze that recently shrouded the region and triggered global headlines as wind-borne smoke from raging Canadian wildfires caused orange skies, thick smog and record-setting pollutant levels. On Sunday morning, a smoke plume moved across New York City, leaving the air quality index in the city at 103 and categorized as “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, particularly for those with heart or lung problems. According to the city’s environment and health data portal, the air quality has largely been improving over time since the thick yellowish haze covered the city last week as a result of smoke from the wildfires which continue to burn in Canada’s forests with little sign of being put out soon. However, hour by hour, there is still large variation in the air quality, “even in neighborhoods with the cleanest air”, said the portal. “That means for short periods, some New Yorkers are exposed to high levels of pollutants,” it added. In Pennsylvania, the state department of environmental protection declared on Sunday an air quality action day and issued a code orange alert. The alert came as a result of elevated ozone levels across three regions of Pennsylvania, including the Philadelphia area, the Lehigh valley, and the central Pennsylvania counties of Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York, Penn Live reported. According to the department, young children, the elderly and those with respiratory issues are especially vulnerable to the effects of air pollution and should limit outdoor activities. Ozone forms as a result of airborne chemicals such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide reacting with sunlight. High ozone levels are most common during summer months due to long days of sunshine and high levels of airborne chemicals. The department encouraged residents on Sunday to conserve electricity by setting air conditioning to a higher temperature, combining errands to reduce vehicle trips, limiting engine idling, and refueling cars and trucks after dusk. The Maryland environmental department has also issued a code orange alert for Sunday in the Baltimore region. “USG [unhealthy for sensitive groups] air quality due to ozone expected around and north-east of Baltimore Sunday as sun and heat returns in the presence of diffuse smoke and a dirtied airmass transported from the south,” the environmental department said. In a tweet on Sunday, WBAL-TV meteorologist Dalencia Jenkins said that the poor quality in the Baltimore metro and Annapolis region is “not entirely because of wildfire smoke, but the ozone pollutants in the air”. “If you are part of an air pollutants-sensitive population, try to limit time outdoors today,” Jenkins added. Meanwhile, hundreds of wildfires continued to burn as firefighters from various countries mobilized to help Canada battle the flames. As of Friday, there were 421 fires still burning, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. |
| First Thing: Millions under air quality alerts in US as Canada fire smoke drifts south | Nicola Slawson | 2023-06-08 17:08:23 | Good morning. Tens of millions of people in the US were under air quality alerts on Wednesday as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, turning the sky in some of the country’s biggest cities a murky brown and saturating the air with harmful pollution. States across the east, including New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, issued air quality alerts, with officials recommending that people limit outdoor activity. In New York City, where conditions were expected to deteriorate further through the day, residents were urged to limit their time outdoors, as public schools canceled outdoor activities. Smoke from wildfires in Canada has been moving south into the US since May. Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires in a particularly fierce start to the summer season. How are New Yorkers coping? The whole city is immersed in a dystopian-looking smog: urban streets in sepia, emptier than usual, bathed in an eerie quiet. More were seen wearing face masks than usual these days, reminiscent of earlier days of the Covid-19 pandemic – and the feeling of potential doom the virus had induced. What should we do to protect ourselves? Exposure to smoke can trigger an array of health problems, experts say, but there are ways residents can keep themselves safe. Staying inside and especially refraining from strenuous outdoor activity is an important way to limit exposure. Keeping indoor air clean by closing windows and doors is also helpful, as is turning on air purification devices where available. Are the fires still burning in Canada? Yes. Hundreds of wildfires burning across Canada, many of them out of control, have blanketed cities in a thick haze of smoke, amid warnings from experts the situation will continue to worsen. What else is happening? Greenhouse gas emissions have reached an all-time high, threatening to push the world into “unprecedented” levels of global heating, scientists have warned. ‘No regrets,’ says Edward Snowden, after 10 years in exile Edward Snowden has warned that surveillance technology is so much more advanced and intrusive today, it makes that used by US and British intelligence agencies he revealed in 2013 look like “child’s play”. In an interview on the 10th anniversary of his revelations about the scale of surveillance – some of it illegal – by the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, he said he had no regrets about what he had done and cited positive changes. But he is depressed about inroads into privacy both in the physical and digital world. “Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” Snowden said. “If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child’s play.” He expressed concern not only about dangers posed by governments and big tech but commercially available video surveillance cameras, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and intrusive spyware such as Pegasus used against dissidents and journalists. What did he say? Looking back to 2013, he said: “We trusted the government not to screw us. But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power.” Republican hardliners’ revolt against Kevin McCarthy shuts down US House of Representatives The US House of Representatives has been forced to postpone all votes until next week, paralyzed by a revolt against its Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, by ultra-conservative members of his own party. The standoff between McCarthy and a hardline faction of his own Republican majority has forced the chamber into a holding pattern that looks likely to persist until at least Monday. Members of the House Freedom Caucus have been upset over the bipartisan debt ceiling bill that McCarthy recently brokered with the Democratic president, Joe Biden, as well as claims that some hardliners had been threatened over their opposition to the deal. “You’ve got a small group of people who are pissed off that are keeping the House of Representatives from functioning,” said Republican representative Steve Womack. “This is insane. This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave, and frankly, I think there will be a political cost to it.” What are the group angry about? The hardliners were among the 71 Republicans who opposed debt ceiling legislation that passed the House last week. They say McCarthy did not cut spending deeply enough and retaliated against at least one of their members. McCarthy and other House Republican leaders dismissed the retaliation claims. What has McCarthy said? He brushed off the disruption as healthy political debate, part of his “risk taker” way of being a leader – not too different, he said, from the 15-vote spectacle it took in January for him to finally convince his colleagues to elect him as speaker. With a paper-thin GOP majority, any few Republicans have outsized sway. In other news … Federal prosecutors formally informed Donald Trump’s lawyers last week that the former president is a target of the criminal investigation examining his retention of national security materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstruction of justice, according to two people briefed on the matter. The House of Representatives plans to investigate claims that the US government is harboring UFOs after a whistleblower former intelligence official said the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles. Several people including children have been injured in a knife attack in a town in the French Alps, according to France’s interior minister. Gérald Darmanin said the attack took place in Annecy. In a short tweet, he said police had detained the attacker. Poland has deported a purported former Russian FSB officer who sought asylum in the country back to Russia, accusing him of lying about his past and background. Emran Navruzbekov claimed to have been a senior officer in Russia’s FSB security service in the southern region of Dagestan. Shannen Doherty has revealed that the terminal breast cancer she has been receiving treatment for over several years has now spread to her brain. In an emotional post on Instagram, Doherty shared a video of herself receiving radiation treatment, writing in the caption that a scan in early January had revealed “Mets”, or metastasis, in her brain. Stat of the day: EU states refusing to host asylum seekers may have to pay up to €20,000 a head EU countries that refuse to host migrants or asylum seekers could be charged up to €20,000 ($21,500) a head under radical proposals aimed at easing the pressure on frontline countries including Italy and Greece. Home affairs ministers from the 27 member states will attend a crunch meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday to discuss two key proposals including a relocation scheme for more than 100,000 migrants a year. But the plans have proved highly contentious, with Poland, Hungary and other countries on the border of the EU struggling to see how they can sell them to their voters. Poland has already said it will not support a compulsory relocation scheme, with the deputy foreign minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk calling it a “pseudo remedy”. Don’t miss this: Pence’s historic challenge – can Trump’s loyal deputy become his nemesis? Mike Pence enters the 2024 presidential race with a murky path ahead to capturing the Republican nomination and a contentious relationship with his former boss and now primary opponent, Donald Trump. Historically, vice-presidents have been able to use their past White House experience to make a strong case for their party’s nomination. But Pence faces unique challenges that could complicate his already difficult task of attempting to topple Trump, who continues to lead in polls of Republican primary voters. Although Pence’s actions on January 6 have been lauded by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, they have not made him as popular with the primary voters whose support he will need to win the nomination. Pence appears to be counting on white evangelical voters, who make up a significant portion of the Republican base, to boost his standing, writes Joan E Greve. Climate check: Canada’s wildfires are part of our new climate reality, experts and officials say Canada’s ongoing wildfire season is a harbinger of our climate future, experts and officials say. The fires are a “really clear sign of climate change”, said Mohammadreza Alizadeh, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal. Research shows that climate change has already exacerbated wildfires dramatically. A 2021 study supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in hot, dry fire weather in the western US. By 2090, global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change, a United Nations report warned last year. Canada is on track to experience its most severe wildfire season on record, national officials said this week. It’s part of a trend experts say will intensify as the climate crisis makes hotter, drier weather and longer fire seasons more common. Sign up First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now. Get in touch If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com |
| US sports leagues postpone games amid air quality concerns from wildfire smoke | Guardian sport and agencies | 2023-06-08 03:36:13 | Major League Baseball postponed games in New York and Philadelphia on Wednesday night because of poor air quality caused by smoke from Canadian wildfires. A National Women’s Soccer League game in New Jersey and an indoor WNBA game set for Brooklyn were also called off Wednesday amid hazy conditions that have raised alarms from health authorities. The New York Yankees’ game against the Chicago White Sox was rescheduled as part of a doubleheader starting at 4.05pm on Thursday, and the Philadelphia Phillies’ game against the Detroit Tigers was reset for 6.05pm on Thursday, originally an off day for both teams. “These postponements were determined following conversations throughout the day with medical and weather experts and all of the impacted clubs regarding clearly hazardous air quality conditions in both cities,” MLB said in a statement. The National Weather Service issued an air quality alert for New York City, saying: “the New York State Department of Health recommends that individuals consider limiting strenuous outdoor physical activity to reduce the risk of adverse health effects.” In Philadelphia, the NWS issued a Code Red. The Yankees and White Sox played through a lesser haze on Tuesday night. Additionally, a Wednesday night contest between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Washington Nationals in the nation’s capital will go forward as scheduled. The NWSL postponed Orlando’s match at Gotham in Harrison, New Jersey, from Wednesday night to 9 August. “The match could not be safely conducted based on the projected air quality index,” the NWSL said. At nearby Belmont Park, the New York Racing Association said training went on as planned ahead of Saturday’s Triple Crown horse race. “NYRA utilizes external weather services and advanced on-site equipment to monitor weather conditions and air quality in and around Belmont Park,” spokesman Patrick McKenna said Wednesday. “Training was conducted normally today, and NYRA will continue to assess the overall environment to ensure the safety of training and racing throughout the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival.” Later Wednesday, the WNBA announced that a scheduled contest between the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center would also be postponed after smoke reportedly entered the arena. The smoke pouring into the US east coast and midwest on Wednesday came from more than 400 blazes in Canada. It has raised alarms from health authorities about poor air quality. A two-game series in Seattle between the Mariners and the Giants was moved to San Francisco in September 2020 because of because of poor air quality caused by West Coast wildfires. New York’s NFL teams, the Giants and Jets, both had Wednesday off from offseason workouts. The Giants had been planning to practice inside Thursday, and the Jets say they are also likely to work out indoors Thursday. A number of minor-league baseball games were postponed |
| Millions still under air quality warnings in US as weather eases Canada wildfires | Adam Gabbatt in New York and Leyland Cecco in Toronto | 2023-06-10 00:06:29 | Millions of North Americans remained under air quality warnings on Friday, even as smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires began to dissipate in the north-eastern US. Moderate to unhealthy air quality continued to linger across a swath of the US and Canada, from the midwest to the Atlantic coast, the US National Weather Service said, although it said “some improvement” will continue this weekend. A favorable shift in weather brought temporary reprieve from Canadian wildfires, but experts caution that decades of changes to the climate – and human actions in the forest – have primed the country’s forests to keep burning. As of Friday, 421 fires were burning, down from 441 on Wednesday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The number of fires deemed out of control also dropped from 256 on Wednesday to 230, aided by rains that hit areas of Quebec. More than 43,000 sq km have burned so far this year, making 2023 the second-worst year for fires on record – a milestone from 2014 probably eclipsed this weekend. The impact has been felt across North America. On Thursday night the Biden administration postponed a planned LGBTQ+ event at the White House, while public schools in New York City and Philadelphia implemented remote learning on Friday. Smoke affected the air quality as far south as North Carolina, while fires still blazed, many out of control, across swaths of Canada. “Smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to be transported south by winds into the US resulting in moderate to unhealthy air quality across parts of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley, and Midwest on Friday,” the National Weather Service said. “Near-surface wildfire smoke associated with Canadian fires is expected to continue plaguing regions from the Great Lakes to the Mid-Atlantic with reduced air quality. “Northwesterly flow around a low pressure system over the Northeast will continue the flow of smoke over the region, but should relax and eventually shift to more of a westerly direction on Saturday.” All of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Indiana are under air quality alerts, CNN reported, while parts of Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina were under alerts. New York City, which at points on Wednesday and Thursday had the worst air quality of any major city in the world, saw improved conditions on Friday morning, with an air quality index of 68, according to AirNow, a government website. That put the city at a “moderate” rating, according to Air Now; at points this week New York topped 400 on the air quality index, meaning the air was classed as “hazardous”. In Philadelphia, garbage pickups and street maintenance were suspended to protect workers from the polluted air, while Connecticut officials in Bridgeport activated the city’s cooling centers protocol – normally used only on the hottest days – so residents could escape the unhealthy air at designated library branches and senior centers. Joe Biden postponed a Pride month celebration with thousands of guests on the White House lawn because of poor air quality in Washington on Thursday. The event will instead be held on Saturday. The event is intended as a high-profile show of support for LGBTQ+ people at a time when the community is under attack from Republican-run state legislatures across the country. It remains unclear when more than 12,000 Canadians displaced by encroaching flames will be able to return home, the Quebec public security minister, François Bonnardel, said, according to the Associated Press. More than 639,000 hectares (2,467 sq miles) have burned in the province, representing the worst fire season in Quebec on record. Hundreds of firefighters from across the world have flown to Canada, and hopes are rising that rains will fall in some areas. Quebec’s forestry minister, Maïté Blanchette Vézina, said: “This sprint phase is over – now we’re in a marathon phase. So in the next days and weeks we will be working to contain those active fires to bring them under control and eventually extinguish them,” she told a briefing. But officials in western Canada have watched with frustration and helplessness as the Donnie Creek fire in British Columbia continues to grow. As of Thursday afternoon, it measured 344,725 hectares in size, and officials have acknowledged that it is likely to burn into the autumn. “It wouldn’t be going out on a limb to say that this has been one of the most challenging wildfire seasons to date … 20,000 hectares is our 10-year average and we’re at just over half a million hectares burned so far this spring,” said Cliff Chapman of the BC Wildfire Service. |
| New York’s essential workers bear the brunt of poor air quality from wildfires | Michael Sainato | 2023-06-09 01:00:37 | Thousands of essential workers have had no choice but to work through the hazardous air from Canada’s raging wildfires that have triggered air quality alerts across the north-east US. “We cannot afford not to go out to work,” said Antonio Solis, a delivery app worker and organizer with Los Deliveristas Unidos in New York City. “Because of this necessity, we’re forced to go out to work and take the risks.” New York City had the worst air quality in the world on Wednesday. Schools and public events were canceled throughout the city, as city officials encouraged residents to remain indoors, limit outdoor activity and wear masks when outside. But Solis said he and his colleagues could not afford to take a day off. “The problem is that because we don’t have a minimum wage, and we still have to rely on tips,” he said. Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project, noted that app delivery workers, because they are classified as independent contractors, are excluded from minimum wage and worker protections and paid sick time leave. Workers have been pushing for local legislation to mandate these protections. “This situation is a great example of why New York City needs to implement the minimum pay law that has been delayed because of corporations’ advocacy against having to pay a minimum wage for 65,000 deliveristas,” said Guallpa. The dangerous pollution levels have reminded some of the Covid pandemic, which struck New York and its essential workers particularly hard. After the pandemic, there were renewed calls for more protections for essential workers. In March 2023, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, rolled back a $23.82 an hour minimum wage for delivery workers that was set to be enacted by 2025 to $19.96 per hour. The city has also delayed rolling out minimum pay scales that were scheduled to go into effect six months ago as delivery app companies, worker groups and elected officials battle over how and how much workers will be paid. Because of the lack of protections, Los Deliveristas Unidos have been directly distributing N95 masks to workers, as the delivery app companies have not been ensuring workers are provided personal protective equipment to work through the wildfire smoke conditions. “If they can’t afford to not go to work, we’re recommending they’re wearing respirators, specifically N95 masks,” added Guallpa. “If they’re at a worksite, their employer should be providing N95 respirators, making sure there is ventilation, air purifiers if they’re working indoors, and if they get sick, they should get paid sick time and they shouldn’t be retaliated against for speaking up against unsafe working conditions.” |
| ‘Out of control’ fires burn across Canada as poor air quality expected to persist | Leyland Cecco in Toronto | 2023-06-07 22:32:29 | Hundreds of wildfires are burning across Canada, many of them out of control, have blanketed cities in a thick haze of smoke, amid warnings from experts the situation will continue to worsen. Toronto has long been known as “the Big Smoke” for its history of heavy industry, but the nickname took on a different meaning on Wednesday when residents donned masks outside, following alerts from officials that the city’s air quality would continue to deteriorate. Outdoor school events were delayed and city officials warned vulnerable groups to remain inside when possible. In the nation’s capital of Ottawa, Environment Canada said the air quality was “very high risk”, alongside the nearby cities of Kingston, Cornwall and Belleville. In much of southern Ontario, the poor air quality is expected to persist into the weekend. The bulk of the smoke in eastern Canada is coming from the province of Quebec, where crews are contending with more than 150 fires, many of which are considered “out of control”. Winds have also carried the wildfire smoke southward, prompting air-quality alerts throughout the US. On Wednesday, both Detroit and New York City had some of the world’s worst air quality of a major city. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has previously issued poor air quality alerts for New England, parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 415 active wildfires across Canada and 238 were considered out of control. Since the fire season began, 2,214 blazes have already burned more than 3.3m hectares of the country, well above the 10-year average of 1,624 fires and 254,429 hectares burned. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre says it had been an “unprecedented” year for wildfires and resources were being exhausted across the country. While eastern Canada is under a relatively rare haze of smoke, crews in British Columbia are waiting for a shift in weather to tackle the Donnie Creek fire, a blaze stretching more than 2,400 sq km in size. The BC Wildfire Service says the wildfire is now considered the second largest in provincial history. Federal officials in Canada warned that without a change in weather, the country was on pace for its worst-ever year for wildfire destruction, pointing to warm and dry conditions that are forecasted to persist in all regions of the country throughout the summer. “This is a scary time for a lot of people,” the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, told reporters earlier this week. Canada is currently at its highest national preparedness level, with available resources stretched thin across the country. Since May, more than 100,000 people have been forced from their homes as wildfires hit all regions of the country, including in places like Nova Scotia, where large, destructive wildfires are relatively uncommon. To combat the blazes, Canada has called on other countries to help. At the moment, there are nearly 1,000 international firefighters helping Canadian crews, coming from the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. |
| Canada wildfires smoke could linger over parts of US for days, officials warn | Adam Gabbatt | 2023-06-09 02:45:11 | Toxic smoke from Canadian wildfires could linger over vast swaths of the US for days, officials warned, as millions of Americans remained under air pollution warnings. Across the eastern US residents were again urged to stay inside and limit or avoid outdoor activities on Thursday, as schools in some cities closed, sporting events were canceled and air travel was disrupted. New York City had the worst air quality of any big city in the world on Thursday morning, according to IQAir, while the second worst was Detroit. Air quality levels were in the 150-200 range on Thursday, marking a slight improvement from Wednesday when record-setting hazardous levels were observed, per Fox Weather. Smoke from wildfires in Canada has been moving south into the US since May. Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires in a particularly fierce start to the summer season. The weather system driving the smoke south “will probably be hanging around at least for the next few days,” Bryan Ramsey, a US National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Associated Press. “Conditions are likely to remain unhealthy, at least until the wind direction changes or the fires get put out,” Ramsey said. “Since the fires are raging – they’re really large – they’re probably going to continue for weeks. But it’s really just going be all about the wind shift.” In New Jersey, public schools in Elizabeth and Newark were closed on Thursday, News12 reported, while public schools in Yonkers, New York, also shut their doors. Students in New York City public schools were on a pre-scheduled “non-attendance” day. New Jersey’s health commissioner, Judith Persichilli, emphasised that the air quality was particularly a risk for young children and suggested those with asthma medicine or rescue inhalers should keep them nearby. She also recommended that children avoid athletic activity. “Children are particularly at risk,” Persichilli said on Thursday during a news briefing in Newark. “This is because they breathe more air relative to their size.” Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, said the state was making a million N95 masks – the type prevalent at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – available at state facilities, including 400,000 in New York City. She urged residents to stay indoors. “You don’t need to go out and take a walk. You don’t need to push the baby in the stroller,” Hochul said on Wednesday night. “This is not a safe time to do that.” On Thursday, Eric Adams, the New York mayor, said “right now, the smoke models are not indicating another large plume over the city” and that there was a chance of “significant improvement” throughout Friday. In Washington, Muriel Bowser, the mayor, ordered schools to cancel outdoor recess, sports and field trips on Thursday. In suburban Philadelphia, officials set up an emergency shelter so people living outside can take refuge from the haze. More than 400 fires burning across Canada have left 20,000 people displaced. The US has sent more than 600 firefighters and support personnel to assist Canadian firefighters, the White House said on Wednesday. Joe Biden spoke to Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, by phone on Wednesday. Trudeau’s office said he thanked Biden for his support and that both leaders “acknowledged the need to work together to address the devastating impacts of climate change”. The Federal Aviation Authority said poor visibility caused by the smoke would continue to affect air travel. On Thursday morning, the FAA paused some flights heading to LaGuardia airport in New York. In New York City, performances of Hamilton and Camelot were cancelled on Wednesday night due to the difficulties caused by the air pollution, while baseball games in New York and Philadelphia were postponed. Smoke reached as far south as Alabama on Wednesday, although the National Weather Service said the effects were not as severe. Canadian officials say this is shaping up to be the country’s worst wildfire season ever. It started early on drier-than-usual ground and accelerated quickly. Smoke from the blazes has been lapping into the US since last month but intensified with recent fires in Quebec, where about 100 were considered out of control on Wednesday. The smoke was so thick in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, that office towers just across the Ottawa River were barely visible. Eastern Quebec got some rain on Wednesday, but the Montreal-based Environment Canada meteorologist Simon Legault said no significant rain is expected for days in the remote areas of central Quebec where the wildfires are more intense. A 2021 study supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in hot, dry fire weather in the western US. By 2090, global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change, a United Nations report warned last year. Associated Press contributed to this report |
| US air quality as far south as Virginia affected by Nova Scotia wildfires | Erum Salam and agencies | 2023-06-03 04:18:24 | The historically intense wildfires that battered the Nova Scotia province on the eastern coast of Canada have had a severe effect on air quality as far south as Virginia and Maryland, the US National Weather Service alerted. Four wildfires have destroyed hundreds of buildings and homes and displaced tens of thousands of people, hitting the Halifax municipality hardest. But the blazes have also sent smoke billowing over New York City, and have prompted officials from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia to report negative effects on their air quality. The health department of Pennsylvania’s Chester county warned “smoke and haze from wildfires in Canada continue to linger” and that air quality may be unhealthy for young children, older adults and people with respiratory problems. Earlier in the week, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, had also seen plumes of smoke from the fires that the US’s neighbors to the north were fighting. The National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia, 164 miles (263km) south of Washington, issued an air quality alert for Friday for the Richmond area due to smoke from the wildfires. St Mary’s county in Maryland also tweeted “air quality may be [affected] by the ongoing wildfires in southeastern Canada”. Officials urged residents to get emergency help by dialing 911 if they notice smoke or the smell of smoke. About 16,000 residents of Canada in and around Halifax were told to leave the area for their safety. Officials confirmed at least half of the Halifax fires had been contained and had not grown since Wednesday, but it was still burning furiously. Halifax’s deputy fire chief, David Meldrum, said officials had completed an inventory of damaged and destroyed properties. But authorities had not been able to immediately release information about the number of affected properties. In nearby Shelburne, a county of about 13,000 people, residents were forced to leave the area. Among the facilities evacuated was the local Roseway hospital. Despite a fierce defensive firefighting force counting on water bombers and air tankers, the large Barrington Lake was engulfed in flames which grew in size to more than 77 sq miles (200 sq km). Cooler temperatures and steady rain were not expected until late Friday, though the forecast called for some spotty showers during the day, giving officials hope that the efforts of those grappling with the wildfires would be aided. The Associated Press contributed to this report • This article was amended on 4 June 2023. An earlier version said that about 1,300 people lived in the county of Shelburne. This should have said about 13,000. |
| Air pollution in US from wildfire smoke is worst in recent recorded history | Oliver Milman in New York | 2023-06-09 00:29:05 | The US experienced its worst toxic air pollution from wildfire smoke in its recent recorded history on Wednesday, researchers have found, with people in New York exposed to levels of pollution more than five times above the national air quality standard. The rapid analysis of the extreme event, shared with the Guardian, found that smoke billowing south from forest fires in Canada caused Americans to suffer the worst day of average exposure to such pollution since a dataset on smoky conditions started in 2006. “It’s the worst by far, I mean, Jesus, it was bad,” said Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who led the work. “It’s hard to believe to be honest, we had to quadruple check it to see if it was right. We have not seen events like this, or even close to this, on the east coast before. This is a historic event.” The Stanford researchers calculated that the average American on Wednesday was exposed to 27.5 micrograms per cubic meter of small particulate matter carried within the plumes of smoke. These tiny flecks of soot, dust and other burned debris, known as PM2.5, bury deep in the lungs when inhaled and are linked to a variety of health conditions and can cause deaths. This high average level of pollution is well beyond the next largest such event, experienced in September 2020 on the US west coast following a record year of fires in the western states, and was far more severe for those directly in the path of the smoke, across much of the north-east US. In New York, where the sky went from a milky white to a Blade Runner orange over the course of a day when schools and playgrounds shut down outdoor activities and people started donning masks outside not worn since the early days of the pandemic, the particulate matter hit around 195 micrograms, more than five times above the national air quality standard. “The levels yesterday were quite dangerous, particularly if you are in a vulnerable group,” said Burke, adding that this includes vast swaths of people such as the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with prior medical conditions. “I expect we will see an uptick in respiratory hospitalizations, pre-term births and, sadly, mortalities.” Many New Yorkers stayed indoors rather than brave the campfire smell lingering on streets shrouded in smoke but even this did not fully shield most people, Burke said, with indoor air monitors in Manhattan showing that people experienced more than 100 micrograms of particulate matter. “People had terrible indoor air too, just really bad,” he said. “Even staying at home is not fully protective. Good luck to anyone trying to get an air filter anywhere in New York yesterday. The eastern seaboard luckily hasn’t had to deal with air quality events like this before, so many people just weren’t prepared.” The Stanford research looks at wildfire smoke levels and gauges the average exposure for all Americans, and has done so since 2006. Burke said, however, that growth in both population and the severity of wildfires, driven by the climate crisis, means that it is unlikely that more people have ever previously been exposed to toxic wildfire smoke than on Wednesday. While previous blazes in California have caused similarly high levels of air pollution, the east coast’s cluster of large cities means that more people have been exposed to harmful air than in previous events. New York City health officials have rolled out a list of safety measures to take as the city remains shrouded in a thick, smoky haze, which could last for several more days as smoke continues to pour from unusually widespread fires in Quebec. In addition to urging residents to wear high-quality masks such as N95s or KN95s, health officials are urging residents to keep windows closed, use an air purifier if possible, and if an air conditioner is on, to close the fresh air intake to prevent outdoor air from entering inside homes. Francesca Dominici, an expert in air pollution and climate at Harvard University, said that people should also refrain from exercising outdoors to avoid the “crazy levels” of air pollution, but that she still expected a surge of hospitalizations from cardiovascular and respiratory problems triggered by the smoke. “You can do some things to protect yourself but this just shows that climate change isn’t just affecting glaciers and polar bears, it’s affecting us to the point we can’t breathe clean air any more,” she said. “I hope as part of this crisis there is an opportunity to realize we need to act on climate change. We’ve gone from three years of not going out because of Covid and now we can’t go outside because of polluted air. The world and nature is telling us something, it’s sending us a very strong message.” |
| ‘Nowhere is safe now’: wildfire smoke brings climate crisis home to Americans | Oliver Milman in New York | 2023-06-09 21:00:55 | The unnerving sight of New York City’s skies turning a dystopian orange from wildfire smoke is just the latest in a barrage of recent distress signals that life in the US is starting to fray under the relentless pressure of the climate crisis, experts have warned. On Wednesday, New York held the dubious title of having the worst air quality in the world, with Detroit in second place, as plumes of smoke from hundreds of fires in Ontario and Quebec were carried south by a stiff breeze. Toxic air warnings affected more than 110 million Americans across a dozen states as a sort of demonic tangerine pall engulfed major east coast cities, blotting out everything from the Empire State Building to the Lincoln Memorial. A meteorologist with the National Weather Service noted that his town in upstate New York “looks like Mars”. It was the worst ever day for wildfire air pollution in recent US history and, as Joe Biden put it, “another stark reminder of the impacts of climate change”. New Yorkers are not unused to climate-driven disasters, but this felt disturbingly abnormal. Eric Adams, the city’s mayor, said his first reaction to the Blade Runner-like skies was “What the hell is this?” Playgrounds were shut down, Broadway theater actors fled the stage, baseball games were called off and previously discarded pandemic masks were suddenly clamped back on to faces. “There’s no blueprint or playbook for these type of issues,” Adams admitted. “You want to be as prepared as possible. But there is no planning for an incident like this.” The climate crisis’s subversion of life’s expected patterns has become a recent theme in the US, however, with the past two weeks showing that global heating is imposing some painful boundaries across the span of the North American continent. State Farm, the US’s largest insurer, announced it will stop selling new home insurance policies in California, the world’s sixth largest economy, due to the “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure” posed by the state’s increasingly fierce wildfires which, like in Canada, are growing in intensity and size due to the tinderbox-like conditions caused by rising temperatures. A second insurer, Allstate, soon followed suit. The upending of the housing market in the US west, a region in the grip of a two-decade megadrought worsened by the climate crisis, was then furthered by Arizona’s decision last week to halt new homebuilding in the Phoenix area because it has run out of available groundwater. An era of untrammeled growth into the desert now appears to be ending. Jesse Keenan, an expert in climate adaptation at Tulane University, said that while progressive voters who throng the US north-east believe the climate emergency is a problem, most hadn’t thought of it as a direct threat to their lives until recently, while those in the west now have to wrestle with a reality far more precarious, and costly, than they once considered. “The idea of retiring or escaping to sunny weather and living the good life is a fragile dream – nowhere is safe now,” Keenan said. “There are increasing costs of climate change that will be a lose-lose situation, affecting housing and financial wellness. This will only exacerbate inequalities as those with the best air conditioning and air filtration will do better than those who don’t. “People always knew living in the US south-west was extremely hard because of the lack of available water, but we had faith in our ability to engineer around Mother Nature,” he added. “That command and control over the environment worked for so long in a stable environment but we are now in an unstable environment. All the infrastructure we relied upon is now failing and there’s no going back.” Unwelcome climatic news keeps arriving – global greenhouse gas emissions are now at an all-time high, researchers have found, as are the temperatures of the world’s broiling oceans. Adding to this balmy stew is the prospect of a strong El Niño event, with scientists forecasting on Thursday that the periodic phenomenon that heightens global heat will probably strengthen throughout this year. Heatwaves, meanwhile, are scorching everywhere from Siberia to Puerto Rico. “Climate change isn’t a future problem or a distant one any more,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “We’re breathing its impacts directly into our lungs today.” While most Americans – the largest consumers of energy in the world – aren’t quite yet prepared to give up their hulking SUVs, prodigious meat eating and capacious housing, about two-thirds say they are at least somewhat worried about global heating, according to recent polling by Yale University, and Biden has sold a climate agenda off the feelgood promise of millions of new jobs in renewable energy and electric car manufacturing. The plummeting cost of wind and solar power, growing uptake of zero-carbon cars and belated government action to tackle the climate crisis mean that “the problems are getting worse and the solutions are getting better,” according to Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Nasa. “We live in the best of times and the worst of times,” she said. “We are really seeing climate impacts ramping up, with more fire weather, more floods and stronger storms, but we also have solutions that are increasingly viable. It’s important to hold both of these truths at the same time.” Marvel said that even while cutting planet-heating emissions to zero won’t result in immediate benefits to the climate, it will quickly lessen the toll of air pollution that regularly affects cities such as Delhi at levels similarly dire to what New York has just experienced. “If we make the climate better, it will make life better in general,” she said. “We are really starting to see the energy transition happening in the US – it’s not a question of whether it’s going to happen or not, it’s whether it will be fast enough and fair enough. That’s what we’ve still got to work out.” |
| Canada wildfires smoke: climate change ‘accelerated conditions’, says New York mayor as Canada battles more than 400 blazes – as it happened | Maya Yang | 2023-06-08 04:54:50 | It is nearly 6pm in New York City where the skies have been shrouded in a thick layer of yellow smokey haze all day. As we wrap up the blog, here is a look at the day’s key events: Tonight’s baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox has been postponed due to the poor air quality across New York City. The air quality health advisory notice in New York has been extended until 11:59pm Thursday.Mayor Eric Adams announced the extension on Wednesday, saying: “We’re in the worst of the conditions but the Air Quality Health Advisory has been extended until 11:59 pm Thursday — which our teams have been anticipating.” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres tweeted a photo of his office view in New York City on Wednesday which depicted the skies outside being shrouded in a grayish-smoke. “With global temperatures on the rise, the need to urgently reduce wildfire risk is critical,” Guterres tweeted. A football match between the New Jersey-New York Gotham and Orlando Pride at the Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey has been postponed. In a statement posted on Instagram, the National Women’s Soccer League wrote: “Due to poor air quality conditions in the New York metropolitan area, tonight’s match between NJ/NY Gotham FC and the Orlando Pride at Red Bull Arena has been postponed.” English actress Jodie Comer stopped the matinee show of Broadway’s Prima Facie on Wednesday as a result of poor air quality. Deadline reports that the show began 10 minutes late, followed by Comer announcing that she was no longer able to continue the performance as she was not able to breathe properly. Hundreds of firefighters are currently fighting forest wildfires in Canada with more to join from the Canadian army, according to Quebec premier Francois Legault. With hundreds of wildfires spreading across multiple regions in Canada, Quebec is currently one of the worst affected regions. According to Reuters, Canada’s second-most populous province has experienced four times its 10-year average of wildfires this year alone. New York’s LaGuardia airport lifted a temporary hold on flights early on Wednesday afternoon, after grounding jets because of the low visibility a few hours earlier. Even though skies did not seem to be clearing over the city, the Federal Aviation Authority, with smoke and haze currently shrouding multiple states, a so-called “ground stop” at the airport was lifted. With New York City being ranked briefly this morning as the city with the world’s worst air pollution, mayor Eric Adams warned that climate change has accelerated the conditions surrounding the smokey haze that has shrouded the city. “While this may be the first time we’ve experienced something like this on this magnitude…it is not the last. Climate change accelerated these conditions,” he said. On Wednesday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau praised the “extreme modesty of heroes” as fire crews across the country grappled with more than 400 blazes, 239 of which are considered out of control. “Firefighters are stepping up first responders are stepping up in harrowing situations to save their fellow citizens,” said Trudeau. “I think we all need to be taking time to recognize the first responders in our communities.” Tens of millions of Americans are currently under air quality alerts as smoke from wildfires spreading through Canada drift southward across east coast states. Multiple states across the east coast including New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut have issued air quality alerts. The alerts come as a result of smoke from hundreds of wildfires that have been burning in Canada as early as May. That’s it for today as we close down the blog. Thank you for following along. Tonight’s baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox has been postponed due to the poor air quality across New York City. For more details on other games being postponed across the country, click here: The air quality health advisory notice in New York has been extended until 11:59pm Thursday. Mayor Eric Adams announced the extension on Wednesday, saying: “We’re in the worst of the conditions but the Air Quality Health Advisory has been extended until 11:59 pm Thursday — which our teams have been anticipating. Mask up and limit your outdoor activities.” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres tweeted a photo of his office view in New York City on Wednesday which depicted the skies outside being shrouded in a grayish-smoke. “At our (UN?) Headquarters in New York, we can feel the deteriorating air quality as smoke from the wildfires in Canada moves south. With global temperatures on the rise, the need to urgently reduce wildfire risk is critical,” Guterres tweeted. He went on to add, “We must make peace with nature. We cannot give up.” Video emerged online of George Washington Bridge which connects New Jersey and New York City being shrouded in in a yellowish hazy smoke. Dharna Noor, the Guardian’s fossil fuels and climate reporter, has created an explainer on ways to keep safe as wildfire smoke shroud the east coast: Exposure to smoke can trigger an array of health problems, experts say, but there are ways residents can keep themselves safe. Staying inside and especially refraining from strenuous outdoor activity is an important way to limit exposure, said Laura Kate Bender, the national assistant vice-president of the healthy air program at the American Lung Association. If one must go outside, experts suggest wearing a mask – preferably an N95 or equivalent. Keeping indoor air clean by closing windows and doors is also helpful, as is turning on air purification devices when possible. (The Environmental Protection Agency does not certify air purifiers, but California regulators recommend these models.) Wildfire smoke is made up of a cocktail of irritants, including gaseous pollutants like carbon monoxide and hazardous air pollutants like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Most concerning, it can include pollution particles known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5, which are so tiny that they can enter the bloodstream when breathed in. For further details, click here: Irania Sanchez, 53, was gasping for breath during her walk in the New York City borough of Queens on Wednesday morning. The air was thick and smelled of the smoke that had descended over the metropolis and a swath of the US. She was on her way to visit a friend who recently had surgery but then wanted to go on a walk with Sanchez. “I said don’t go out, it’s too dangerous for you,” Sanchez told the Guardian, supporting herself on her walking stick. As a cleaning truck went by, sweeping dust into the air, Sanchez gasped and moved away. “It’s too much, it’s too much,” she said. The whole city is immersed in a dystopian-looking smog: urban streets in sepia, emptier than usual, bathed in an eerie quiet. More were seen wearing face masks than usual these days, reminiscent of earlier days of the Covid-19 pandemic – and the feeling of potential doom the virus had induced. Across the river, in midtown Manhattan, which is usually filled with tourists at this time of the year enjoying the spring weather, there were suddenly fewer people and cars and more surgical masks than usual. For the full story on how New Yorkers are faring amid the smog crisis, click here: A football match between the New Jersey-New York Gotham and Orlando Pride at the Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey has been postponed. In a statement posted on Instagram, the National Women’s Soccer League wrote: “Due to poor air quality conditions in the New York metropolitan area, tonight’s match between NJ/NY Gotham FC and the Orlando Pride at Red Bull Arena has been postponed… The safety of our players, officials and fans is our top priority. Following consultation with the NWSL Medical and Operations staff, it was determined that the match could not be safely conducted based on the projected air quality index.” The match has been rescheduled to August 9 at 7:30pm. English actress Jodie Comer stopped the matinee show of Broadway’s Prima Facie on Wednesday as a result of poor air quality. Deadline reports that the show began 10 minutes late, followed by Comer announcing that she was no longer able to continue the performance as she was not able to breathe properly. According to the outlet, after the curtain lowered, an announcement asked attendees to remain seated until a decision was made as to cancel the afternoon show or continue with an understudy. Variety has reported an update as of 3:16pm, saying that the show has continued with an understudy. For full details, click here: Another expert, Marshall Burke, associate professor of earth system science at Stanford University, has tweeted a chart putting into context how the current smoke event is bigger in scale than anything else in the last two decades in the city. It is slightly past 3:15pm in New York where the yellow skies are still shrouded in a smokey haze. Here is where things currently stand: Hundreds of firefighters are currently fighting forest wildfires in Canada with more to join from the Canadian army, according to Quebec premier Francois Legault. With hundreds of wildfires spreading across multiple regions in Canada, Quebec is currently one of the worst affected regions. According to Reuters, Canada’s second-most populous province has experienced four times its 10-year average of wildfires this year alone. New York’s LaGuardia airport lifted a temporary hold on flights early on Wednesday afternoon, after grounding jets because of the low visibility a few hours earlier. Even though skies did not seem to be clearing over the city, the Federal Aviation Authority, with smoke and haze currently shrouding multiple states, a so-called “ground stop” at the airport was lifted. With New York City being ranked briefly this morning as the city with the world’s worst air pollution, mayor Eric Adams warned that climate change has accelerated the conditions surrounding the smokey haze that has shrouded the city. “While this may be the first time we’ve experienced something like this on this magnitude…it is not the last. Climate change accelerated these conditions,” he said. On Wednesday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau praised the “extreme modesty of heroes” as fire crews across the country grappled with more than 400 blazes, 239 of which are considered out of control. “Firefighters are stepping up first responders are stepping up in harrowing situations to save their fellow citizens,” said Trudeau. “I think we all need to be taking time to recognize the first responders in our communities.” Tens of millions of Americans are currently under air quality alerts as smoke from wildfires spreading through Canada drift southward across east coast states. Multiple states across the east coast including New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut have issued air quality alerts. The alerts come as a result of smoke from hundreds of wildfires that have been burning in Canada as early as May. Climate crisis has already exacerbated wildfires dramatically, research shows A 2021 study supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in hot, dry fire weather in the western US. By 2090, global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change, a United Nations report warned last year. Canada is on track to experience its most severe wildfire season on record, national officials said this week. It’s part of a trend experts say will intensify as climate change makes hotter, drier weather and longer fire seasons more common. More than 400 blazes were burning across Canada on Wednesday, following an unprecedentedly intense beginning to the fire season. Hot and dry conditions are expected to persist through to the end of the season. “The ongoing wildfires remind us that carbon pollution carries a cost on our society, as it accelerates climate change,” Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, tweeted on Wednesday. Some US leaders have also been making that link. Health officials in Boston warned on Wednesday morning that the air quality in the city is currently “unhealthy” for a handful of groups. Those groups include people with heart or lung disease, asthma, older adults, children, teenagers and people who are active outdoors. Health officials also warned that those with asthma should stay indoors to avoid triggering attack. NBC10 Boston has published a handful of photos showing the city shrouded in haze: Hundreds of firefighters are currently fighting forest wildfires in Canada with more to join from the Canadian army, according to Quebec premier Francois Legault. With hundreds of wildfires spreading across multiple regions in Canada, Quebec is currently one of the worst affected regions. According to Reuters, Canada’s second-most populous province has experienced four times its 10-year average of wildfires this year alone. “Right now, with the manpower we have, we can fight about 40 fires at the same time. But we have 150 fires so we have to make sure that we focus where the problems are the more urgent,” Legault said, Reuters reports. Currently, 520 firefighters are fighting the fires and an additional 150 are set to join from the Canadian army. Legault said he hoped an additional 500 firefighters would arrive in the coming days from the New Brunswick province, as well as from France, the United States, Portugal, Spain, and Mexico. New York’s LaGuardia airport lifted a temporary hold on flights early on Wednesday afternoon, after grounding jets because of the low visibility a few hours earlier. Even though skies did not seem to be clearing over the city, the Federal Aviation Authority, with smoke and haze currently shrouding multiple states, a so-called “ground stop” at the airport was lifted. Earlier the FAA had warned that the stop “could impact travel through the airports” as flights out of LaGuardia airport were grounded and flights were slowed into and out of Newark Airport in New Jersey. In a video released on Twitter, the FAA’s national traffic management officer said, “Today we’re dealing with some smoke and haze in the northeast.” He went on to add, “There are some fires in Canada that have been producing some smoke, due to the wind patterns it is now impacting the northeast of the U.S. so from Boston, the NY metro area, Philadelphia and the DC metro area — are all experiencing some smoke that could impact travel through the airports.” With New York City being ranked briefly this morning as the city with the world’s worst air pollution, mayor Eric Adams warned that climate change has accelerated the conditions surrounding the smokey haze that has shrouded the city. “While this may be the first time we’ve experienced something like this on this magnitude…it is not the last. Climate change accelerated these conditions.” Adams went on to urge for more action towards addressing climate change issues, saying: “New York City is clearly a national leader on public health and climate action and these dangerous air quality conditions are clearly an urgent reminder that we must act now to protect our city, our environment and the future of our children.” Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and echoed similar sentiments towards climate change on Wednesday, tweeting: “Right now, 98 MILLION people on the East Coast are under air quality alerts from Canadian fires and, last night, NYC had the worst air quality in the world. Climate change makes wildfires more frequent and widespread. If we do nothing, this is our new reality. It’s time to act.” Meanwhile, during a press briefing this afternoon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that “climate change [is] a top priority” as tens of millions of Americans remain under air quality alerts. Here are images coming out of Canada as the country grapples with hundreds of wildfires currently burning across multiple provinces including Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario: On Wednesday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau praised the “extreme modesty of heroes” as fire crews across the country grappled with more than 400 blazes, 239 of which are considered out of control. “Firefighters are stepping up first responders are stepping up in harrowing situations to save their fellow citizens,” said Trudeau. “I think we all need to be taking time to recognize the first responders in our communities.” Trudeau acknowledged air quality warnings across the country that have called for vulnerable people to remain indoors. Outdoor school events have been canceled and in eastern Canadian cities, students have been kept inside. More than 100 firefighters are set to arrive from France on Thursday to assist crews in Quebec. Already, there are nearly 1,000 international firefighters helping Canadian crews, coming from the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. “It’s all hands on deck,” said public safety minister Bill Blair. Already, 2,293 wildfires have burned in Canada this season, torching approximately 3.8 million hectares of land, well above the 10-year average of 1,624 fires and 254,429 hectares burned. An estimated 20,180 people remain evacuated from their homes and communities. Over 200 “out of control” fires are currently burning across Canada as experts warn that air quality will continue to deteriorate. Leyland Cecco reports from Toronto: Toronto has long been known as “the Big Smoke” for its history of heavy industry, but the nickname took on a different meaning on Wednesday when residents donned masks outside, following alerts from officials that the city’s air quality would continue to deteriorate. Outdoor school events were delayed and city officials warned vulnerable groups to remain inside when possible. In the nation’s capital of Ottawa, Environment Canada said the air quality was “very high risk”, alongside the nearby cities of Kingston, Cornwall and Belleville. In much of southern Ontario, the poor air quality is expected to persist into the weekend. The bulk of the smoke in eastern Canada is coming from the province of Quebec, where crews are contending with more than 150 fires, many of which are considered “out of control”. For more details, click here: My colleague Adam Gabbatt has the full report on how smoke from Canada’s wildfires is having an impact on air quality in the US. He writes: Tens of millions of people in the US were under air quality alerts on Wednesday, as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, turning the sky in some of the country’s biggest cities a murky brown and saturating the air with harmful pollution. States across the east, including New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, issued air quality alerts, with officials recommending that people limit outdoor activity. In New York City, where conditions were expected to deteriorate further through the day, residents were urged to limit their time outdoors, as public schools canceled outdoor activities. Smoke from wildfires in Canada has been moving south into the US since May. Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires in a particularly fierce start to the summer season. Video has emerged online of a hazy Yankee Stadium in the Bronx shrouded in smoke as fans watched a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday. Mayor Eric Adams has issued an air quality health advisory for all five boroughs. An air quality alert has been issued for Wednesday and Thursday across southeast Michigan, including Detroit. The alert covers areas including Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, Livingston, St. Clair, Lapeer, Monroe, Lenawee, Genesee and Sanilac counties, ClickOnDetroit reports. Earlier this morning, Detroit ranked 10th in the world for poor quality, according to IQAir. Hundreds of wildfires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires in a particularly fierce start to the summer season. As the country grapples with the unprecedented threat, smoke moved into parts of north-east US, where tens of millions of people were under air quality alerts on Wednesday and told to limit outdoor activity. We’d like to hear from our readers on how you are coping, both in Canada and the US. People living in Canada, how have you been affected? Those living in the US, how are you dealing with the air quality and hazy skies? Here is a look at some images across the country as millions of Americans remain under air quality advisory alerts: Philadelphia health officials have announced that the city is currently under a Code Red Fine Particles Action Day Alert. “This means that the air is unhealthy to breathe. Air quality may vary throughout the city & throughout the day, with some areas having significantly worse quality depending on the prevailing winds,” said Philadelphia Public Health. It went on to urge residents to “strongly consider cancelling outdoor events and gatherings” and to wear a “high quality mask” such as an N-95 or KN-95 if possible. It also urged residents to close all windows and doors to minimize air population and to recirculate the air in homes via fans to “avoid bringing more air pollution” into homes. Concerning symptoms to look out for include difficulty breathing, nausea, and dizziness. Despite June 7 being Global Running Day, numerous running events across New York City have been cancelled as a result of poor air quality. On Wednesday, the New York Road Runners cancelled its Global Running Day events, the New York Times reports. In a post on Twitter, the group wrote, “June 7 is Global Running Day, but if you’re in NYC or any affected area, please read and follow your city’s health advisory regarding air quality, and consider running another day.” Meanwhile, New York City’s Prospect Park Track Club announced on Wednesday that a 5k run it was supposed to host tonight at Prospect Park in Brooklyn has been cancelled. Tens of millions of Americans are currently under air quality alerts as smoke from wildfires spreading through Canada drift southward across east coast states. Multiple states across the east coast including New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut have issued air quality alerts. The alerts come as a result of smoke from hundreds of wildfires that have been burning in Canada as early as May. At one point on Wednesday morning, New York City had the second worst air quality in the world, coming in right under Delhi, India. Mayor Eric Adams has urged residents to limit outdoor activity and warned those with pre-existing respiratory problems to stay indoors at this time. Speaking to the Associated Press, David Hill, a pulmonologist in Waterbury, Connecticut, and a member of the American Lung Association’s national board of directors, said: “We have defenses in our upper airway to trap larger particles and prevent them from getting down into the lungs. These are sort of the right size to get past those defenses… When those particles get down into the respiratory space, they cause the body to have an inflammatory reaction to them.” For more details, click here: Tens of millions of Americans are currently under air quality alerts as smoke from wildfires currently spreading through Canada drift southward across east coast states. As of Tuesday, the US Environmental Protection Agency has issued poor air-quality alerts for New England, parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the Associated Press reports. Since May, smoke from Canadian wildfires has been moving over to the US. The most recent fires near Quebec have been burning for at least several days, according to the Associated Press. In New York City, health officials have urged residents to limit outdoor activities and stay indoors for as much as possible, with mayor Eric Adams saying that the air quality alert is an “unprecedented event in our city and New Yorkers must take precaution.” “Those with pre-existing respiratory problems, like heart or breathing problems, as well as children and older adults, may be especially sensitive and should stay indoors at this time,” Adams added. As of Wednesday morning, New York City’s air quality rating is currently the fifth worst in the world, with Delhi taking the lead as first, according to IQAir air quality index. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates. |
| ‘Never experienced anything like this’: readers on Canada wildfires smoke and air pollution | Guardian readers and Alfie Packham | 2023-06-08 22:21:16 | Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires. Smoke from the wildfires in Canada has been moving south into the US since May and is affecting tens of millions of people in the north-east, but also the midwest and as far down as the Carolinas. New York briefly had the worst air quality of any big city in the world on Wednesday, according to IQAir, and toxic air quality alerts continued on Thursday. Readers in Canada and the US have got in touch to describe how they have been affected from the smell of smoke to breathing particles in the air. ‘There’s a lot of gunk in the air’ I live right on the border with Ontario. The fires are in an adjoining county, Pontiac county. We were told to stay indoors and keep the windows closed, and if you must go out, be very careful and not exert yourself. This is a first in this area; I’ve lived here for 29 years. My general feeling is that this is going to be the new normal actually. They say that wildfires are increasing throughout the whole world. And this is just one aspect of it. This has brought it home to us. Blue has returned to the sky but for the past few days, it’s been like pure grey, a slate grey, and extremely depressing. And there’s a lot of gunk in the air. I was wearing my mask outside. David Mills, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada ‘Bird life has been very subdued’ There’s a sense of being trapped. I am an outdoor person normally, and the air was too thick even with a mask yesterday. We’ve shut the windows, but even indoors everyone’s breathing is affected to some degree. Today I’m wearing a mask outside, but it isn’t enough to block the smoke. The bird life has been very subdued. Yesterday they still made a valiant effort to sing, but today they couldn’t even manage a dawn chorus. The evidence of what they have to breathe is evident in the fine ash coating the exterior of the car like dust. We had a thunderstorm last night, but it didn’t clear the air; the only effect was that the air smelt of wet smoke instead of dry for a while. We can’t see the sun rise or set. During the rest of the day it’s a dim fuchsia colour in a yellow-grey sky. I’ve been to really polluted places in Mexico and in South America, but this is on a whole new level. Ironically, our government is barely discussing the climate crisis. Jennie, teacher, Lansdowne, Ontario, Canada ‘Student health is being monitored’ The city of Barrie is approximately 100km north of Toronto. The school in which I teach is one of 116 in the Simcoe county district school board, an overall area covering approximately 4,800 sq km. Staff are being advised in all the schools to avoid any kind of strenuous outdoor sports or activities, competitive games between schools are being cancelled, student health is being monitored closely, and we are told that tomorrow will be much worse. On a personal note there is a constant smell of smoke in the air and the sky remains hazy all the time due to the particles in the air. If one didn’t know better one would think that the fires are very close, despite being hundreds of kilometres away. Nicholas, 54, teacher, Barrie, Ontario, Canada ‘We are back to wearing masks’ I live in Ottawa. We have been experiencing heavy smoke for several days. I have a cottage in the Laurentians, two hours from Ottawa. There have been several small fires still contained there as well. School children are not allowed outside for recess. Even dog walking is being curtailed. We are back to wearing masks. I have a friend that lives in Nova Scotia just moved to a place pretty much in the wilderness and she was on the border of the fires last week and almost had to be evacuated and nothing’s ever happened in Nova Scotia as far as I can remember. Occasionally we do see smoke from fires, maybe two summers ago as well. But nothing like this. Dianne, retired magazine publisher, Ottawa ‘I’m doing work calls bathed in radioactive orange light’ I’m doing work calls, bathed in radioactive orange light, watching the smoke slowly blot out the sky, wearing a face mask alone inside my home because the air isn’t safe because the planet is on fire. Half of my brain is trying to work and half of my brain is trying to decide if sealing the windows with duct tape is an overreaction. My apartment is drafty and the smoke smell is so strong I’m wearing a mask inside. It reminds me of right before lockdown – should we go to work, should we wear a mask. At the beginning of the pandemic it was impolite to start calls or end emails without declaring your hope that everyone is well or safe or whatever. For the next few days I guess I should express hope that everyone is breathing OK before getting work out of them. Amanda, Queens, New York City ‘I have never experienced anything like this’ I’ve lived in Ithaca for almost 50 years and I have never experienced anything like this. My usual view, right across the valley to Cornell University’s towers, is obscured with thick yellow fog. Birds and squirrels seem unaffected, but I smell woodsmoke when I step out and it makes my eyes tear, and my throat scratchy. We have been told to stay inside. June is so lovely here, cool and green, so it’s really hard to miss being out walking. but I really feel for the Canadian people not too far north of me. Peggy, 79, retired, Ithaca, New York ‘It was like someone had an out-of-control barbecue’ On Wednesday, it was like someone on our street had an out-of-control barbecue. As you’re walking down the street, you could see smoke. Everyone is coughing. It’s not like a Covid cough; it’s like every few seconds you have another cough in the back of your throat. I checked the air quality in Detroit and it’s 171, whatever that means. I don’t really know what the numbers mean because we never talked about them before. What’s really worrying me about this is my parents are quite elderly and my dad has emphysema, so I’m trying to get them to wear masks when they go out. I was happy to hear the United States is sending more firefighters to Canada to help them. But I don’t know how much they can do. It hasn’t really affected us in the Midwest before – I’ve lived here my entire life. It’s very scary and I’m afraid this is going to happen again. Sandra, 55, Detroit, Michigan |
| Canada wildfires: blazes intensifying due to climate crisis, says Kamala Harris; Trudeau accuses opposition of inaction – as it happened | Maya Yang (now); Fran Lawther (earlier) | 2023-06-09 05:09:57 | It is slightly past 6pm in New York City. Here is a wrap up of the day’s key events: In a tweet on Thursday, US vice-president Kamala Harris said that the Canadian wildfires and subsequent smoke haze shrouding many east coast states “are intensifying because of the climate crisis”. She added that the Biden-Harris administration was working closely alongside Canadian officials in response to the crisis. The US experienced its worst toxic air pollution from wildfire smoke in its recent recorded history on Wednesday, researchers have found, with people in New York exposed to levels of pollution more than five times above the national air quality standard. The rapid analysis of the extreme event, shared with the Guardian, found that smoke billowing south from forest fires in Canada caused Americans to suffer the worst day of average exposure to such pollution since a dataset on smoky conditions started in 2006. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, has lashed out against Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s official conservative opposition, accusing him of refusing to put forward concrete plans to fight climate crisis. Speaking in parliament and gradually raising his voice, Trudeau said: “For the leader of the opposition to consider that the forest fires that are taking people from their communities and destroying their homes are a mere distraction … is shameful.” US president Joe Biden has spoken Trudeau and offered to deploy all available federal firefighting assets. In a statement released on Wednesday, the White House announced that the Biden administration has offered additional support to respond to the wildfires currently burning across Canada. Toxic smoke from Canadian wildfires could linger over vast swathes of the US for days, officials warned, as millions of Americans remained under air pollution warnings. Across the eastern US residents were again urged to stay inside and limit or avoid outdoor activities on Thursday, as schools in some cities closed, sporting events were canceled and air travel was disrupted. Protesters are set to descend upon the White House on Thursday amid growing anger among climate activists at Joe Biden for allowing a controversial gas pipeline in Appalachia to be fast-tracked. Several hundred protesters are expected to demand Biden “reclaim his climate legacy” by blocking the Mountain Valley pipeline, a 300-mile pipeline that will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia. New York governor Kathy Hochul tweeted that from Thursday 1m N95 masks would be made available at state facilities. She also urged people living in the state to remain indoors. That’s it from me today, Maya Yang, as we close the blog. Thank you for following along. Here is a video of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s fiery address in parliament during which he slammed conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre for climate crisis inaction: President Joe Biden has asked transport secretary Pete Buttigieg to keep him informed about his progress on managing air traffic implications as a result of the worsening air quality, he announced on Thursday. Hundreds of flights have been delayed across the country as of Thursday afternoon due to poor visibility and smoke, according to FlightAware.com. Jean Bright, who is originally from the UK but now lives in Ottawa, told the Guardian that she can see blue sky in Arnprior today but adds the scale of the problem is “almost incomprehensible”. She said: “Once fires get going, they are incredibly difficult to put out. There aren’t enough fire fighters, pumpers, specialized gear, water bombers, not to mention road access into dense remote bush. Some small communities, around 2,000 people, have volunteer firefighters. And they are the lucky ones. There are few bush or logging roads, access is severely limited. The water bombers need a fair stretch of water such as a big lake to suck up water. They have been going full blast. The pilots also need a break as they can’t fly 24/7. “ With Canada currently fighting hundreds of wildfires in multiple provinces, the Guardian took a look at the small village of Lytton in British Columbia which in 2021 broke Canada’s highest temperature ever at 49.6C. Two days after the temperature skyrocketed to nearly 50C, a wildfire scorched the entire village. Here is the documentary the Guardian produced on Lytton and how its residents have been relying on a collective spirit to heal: Here is footage of the wildfires currently raging across British Columbia, Canada: With hundreds of forest fires spreading uncontrollably across the country, 3.8m hectares (or 9.4m acres) have already been burned, according to government ministers. New York City’s health advisory has been extended until 11.59pm on Friday, 9 June, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Thursday. “Please continue to limit your outdoor activities and mask up,” he said. Massachusetts Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has also chimed in on the climate change discussion as smoke from Canada’s wildfires continue to spread across the US. “Extreme weather. Drought. Massive wildfires that destroy our air quality. Evidence of a climate crisis is all around us and Northeasterners can look no further than out their own windows to find it,” Warren tweeted. “We need to address this crisis head-on—there’s no more time to waste,” she added. New Yorkers appeared to poke fun at the apocalyptic aesthetic that has engulfed the city in a dense yellow as a result of smoke drifting from Canada’s wildfires. In one video posted onto Twitter, one resident appeared to carry a speaker blasting the soundtrack of Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 movie Dune, a science fiction epic set in a galactic desert. “I’d think it was the end of the world if I didn’t know abt dune,” one person replied. Another person wrote, “certified dune moment in New York rn.” New pictures are coming through on the newswires of the wildfires currently burning across Canada’s multiple provinces including Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec: Mark Fischer, 58, an IT project manager from Royersford, Pennsylvania has shared with the Guardian the ways that the smokey haze has affected him. Fischer wrote: “I’ve been fairly lucky that I’ve been able to stay in the house since yesterday, apart from feeding the birds and taking out the trash. I’ve only been outside for minutes at a time, but it was enough to irritate my eyes this morning. Not my breathing so much, because I kind of held my breath. I didn’t want to risk it. “I’ve remained inside since yesterday. I’m thankful we still have electricity and gas. This morning the sky had a surreal light salmon color, not as dramatic as the burnt orange from yesterday’s NYC photos. But the sun is breaking through now.” We’d like to continue hearing from our readers in Canada and the US about the impact of wildfires and smoke. Please feel free to share your story below: Mary Yang is speaking to protesters in DC who oppose the Mountain Valley pipeline: Protesters outside the White House said the wildfires are an example of why dirty energy projects must not go ahead. Demonstrators said they were especially disappointed in Biden, who last week signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility Act to avert a first ever national default in a deal that included fast tracking the controversial pipeline. “I feel like he stabbed us in the back, said Don Jones, who has lived in Southwest Virginia for 65 years and was sued by the company for refusing to allow construction on his family’s land. Jones and his wife have been “fighting” against the pipeline since 2015, when they say construction began on their farmland in Giles County, Virginia. While no longer in use, the land has been in his family for seven generations, and Jones said he feels a need to protect it. Jones, who voted for Biden in 2020, said he no longer trusts the president and wouldn’t vote for him again. “Unless he fixes this.” “It might be rural country, Appalachia, dirt people, whatever they might think of us,” Jones said. “But there are some pretty smart people. They’ve worked the land, they respect the land, they’re stewards of it.” Jones said the pipeline, which is set to cross streams and rivers, will harm access to clean water. “It’s in the ground,“ said Jones, of the pipeline. “But We’re hoping gas will never be able to fill it.” “We have to fight for the water,” Yvette Jones, his wife of 38 years, added. “If you don’t have water, you don’t have life.” Mary Yang is reporting from a protest in Washington DC about the Mountain Valley pipeline: A couple hundred protesters gathered in front of the White House Thursday afternoon, most from Southwestern Virginia and West Virginia, who say they were impacted by the route of the Mountain Valley pipeline. As they gathered, the air quality in Washington was “very unhealthy” according to the site airnow.com, due to smoke from the Canada wildfires. “Humanity has reached a breaking point,” one speaker said, addressing the group, adding that it was fitting that the earth was currently “on fire.” Protestors also called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, calling the hazy air “toxic dust.” US president Joe Biden announced that he has dictated a national inter-agency fire center response to Canada’s request for further assistance in fighting its wildfires. “I’ve dictated a national inter-agency fire center response to Canada’s request for additional fire fighters and the fire suppression assets such as air tankers. We already have 600 American firefighters on the ground,” he told reporters on Thursday. Biden said that he will also send “fire suppression assets, such as air tankers” to help fight the wildfires. New York Republican representative Marc Molinaro told Fox News that it is too soon to start “lecturing” about climate change as the smoke from the wildfires continue to shroud numerous east coast states. Speaking on Fox and Friends, Molinaro said, “There is little question that Canada needs to obviously focus on forest management but this isn’t the moment to start lecturing people about the science of climate change. Right now it’s about putting out a fire and keeping people safe.” A Code Purple air quality alert has been issued for Washington DC on Thursday. Code purple means that all groups should stay indoors for as much as possible and that those that must work outside should reduce their work if possible and also wear a high-quality mask such as an N95 or N95. Experts in Canada say the country is increasingly forced to grapple with two wildfire peaks as climate conditions continue to shift. “Typically, the peak of the wildfire season is often in the middle of the summer, not now. But we’ve had more area burn than any year since we’ve been keeping records. This has been an extraordinary start to the year,” said Paul Kovacs, the executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. “But most years after this point in the year, it gets much worse, the fires really take off. And should that be what’s coming next. We’re very much on edge.” More than half of the 414 fires burning from coast to coast are determined to be out of control said emergency preparedness minister Bill Blair. In Quebec, where more than 160 fires are burning and the smoke has pushed down into the United States prompting dozens of air quality warnings, the province’s premier pleaded with residents to follow evacuation orders. “Don’t put your life in danger,” premier François Legault said. “When we ask you to evacuate it’s because there’s a real risk.” Already more than 11,000 people have been displaced by the wildfires and a record 457,000 hectares have burned. “In the history of (the agency) – nearly 50 years – we’ve surpassed the worst year on record,” Quebec natural resources minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina told reporters. “It’s a situation that’s unprecedented.” Readers in Canada and the US have got in touch to describe how they have been affected from the smell of smoke to breathing particles in the air. ‘There’s a lot of gunk in the air’ I live right on the border with Ontario. The fires are in an adjoining county, Pontiac county. We were told to stay indoors and keep the windows closed, and if you must go out, be very careful and not exert yourself. This is a first in this area; I’ve lived here for 29 years. My general feeling is that this is going to be the new normal actually. They say that wildfires are increasing throughout the whole world. And this is just one aspect of it. This has brought it home to us. Blue has returned to the sky but for the past few days, it’s been like pure grey, a slate grey, and extremely depressing. And there’s a lot of gunk in the air. I was wearing my mask outside. David Mills, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada Here is a satellite image depicting plumes of wildfire across North America: “Weather satellite data showed the plume travelling in a South-Easterly direction on the 6th and 7th of June. On the 7th, thunderstorms along the US Eastern Seaboard lofted smoke and gas into the stratosphere, while on the 8th the smoke itself prevented clouds from forming – meaning that New York has a cloudless day even though visibility was extremely poor,” write Simon Proud, a scientist affiliated with the UK’s National Centre for Earth Observation. In a tweet on Thursday, US vice-president Kamala Harris said that the Canadian wildfires and subsequent smoke haze shrouding many east coast states “are intensifying because of the climate crisis”. She added that the Biden-Harris administration was working closely alongside Canadian officials in response to the crisis. Speaking to reporters yesterday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the wildfires burning across Canada and the smoke spreading into the US is “yet another alarming example of the ways in which the climate crisis is disturbing our lives and our communities.” The US experienced its worst toxic air pollution from wildfire smoke in its recent recorded history on Wednesday, researchers have found, with people in New York exposed to levels of pollution more than five times above the national air quality standard. The rapid analysis of the extreme event, shared with the Guardian, found that smoke billowing south from forest fires in Canada caused Americans to suffer the worst day of average exposure to such pollution since a dataset on smoky conditions started in 2006. “It’s the worst by far, I mean, Jesus, it was bad,” said Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who led the work. “It’s hard to believe to be honest, we had to quadruple check it to see if it was right. We have not seen events like this, or even close to this, on the east coast before. This is an historic event.” US Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib has called on Michigan residents to check on each other as Michigan continues to be shrouded in a thick layer of smoke. “Thinking about all of our children and residents living with asthma + respiratory illnesses. This is so dangerous for them & all of our communities who already live with poor air quality. This is going to make it worse. Please take time today and check in on your neighbors,” she tweeted. On Wednesday morning, Detroit ranked second in the world for worst air quality, according to IQ air quality index. On Thursday morning, Detroit ranked 12th, with New York coming in at number one. Tlaib went on to tweet, “None of us should have to fight to breathe clean air. It’s our right,” adding that last week’s debt ceiling deal which reduces environmental protections “makes this worse.” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has lashed out against Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s official conservative opposition, accusing him of refusing to put forward concrete plans to fight climate change. Speaking in parliament and gradually raising his voice, Trudeau said: “For the leader of the opposition to consider that the forest fires that are taking people from their communities and destroying their homes are a mere distraction…is shameful. The fact of the matter is, he doesn’t have anything to say about that because he refuses to put forward any real plan to fight against climate change and he does nothing but fight against our plan to fight against climate change. If he has a better plan, let him say it because we’ve been waiting a long time for it! But he has no plan to fight climate change, he still questions whether it exists while Canada is burning!” New York City’s fire department will be distributing N95 masks at multiple locations across all five boroughs, the city has announced. Each person will be limited to two masks. In an interview with Fox News, Steve Milloy, a member of then-president Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, said the wildfire haze in New York City poses “no health risk.” “There’s EPA research, they’ve done lots of clinical research on asthmatics, on elderly asthmatics, on children, on elderly with heart disease. Not a cough or a wheeze out of any of them,” he said. The clip sparked angry responses from Twitter users who noted that extensive research shows air pollution can be deadly. “Air pollution – especially fine particulates like in the smoke – is responsible for millions of deaths annually,” Nick Mark, a pulmonologist in Seattle, Washington, tweeted. Steve Milloy serves on the board of the climate-denying, Koch Brothers-backed think tank the Heartland Institute. He previously worked as director of external policy and strategy at Murray Energy Corp, a massive US coal corporation. Experts told the Guardian that children, people with chronic illnesses, and those of a lower socioeconomic class are especially at risk amid the intense air pollution, and that those who are affected should avoid the outdoors, don masks, and turn on air purifiers to stay safe. EPA, meanwhile, is encouraging affected Americans to “protect your health when smoke is in the air”. A user on TikTok has shared a makeshift air purifier hack in which she tapes four filters together and attaches a box fan pointing upwards. “I’m in the [Pacific northwest] and typically we have this issue every spring, summer, Cali-Canada fires destroy our air and this is what works for us… It works for all types of things and…will save your life with really smokey days,” she said. US president Joe Biden has spoken with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and offered to deploy all available federal firefighting assets. In a statement released on Wednesday, the White House announced that the Biden administration has offered additional support to respond to the wildfires currently burning across Canada. It went on to add: “The President has directed his team to deploy all available Federal firefighting assets that can rapidly assist in suppressing fires impacting Canadian and American communities. To date, the United States has deployed more than 600 U.S. firefighters and support personnel, and other firefighting assets to respond to the fires.” Both leaders have agreed to stay in close touch as the situation develops. US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called on agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to double the amount of people available to fight the effects of Canada’s wildfires and to address air quality risks currently faced by millions of Americans, Reuters reports. New York City health officials have rolled out a list of safety measures to take as the city remains shrouded in a thick smokey haze. In addition to urging residents to wear high-quality masks such as N95s or KN95s, health officials are urging residents to keep windows closed, use an air purifier if possible, and if an air conditioner is on, to close to fresh air intake to prevent outdoor air from entering inside homes. As the US north-east grapples with smoke from Canada’s wildfires, here are the latest images sent to us from the newswires: Toxic smoke from Canadian wildfires could linger over vast swathes of the US for days, officials warned, as millions of Americans remained under air pollution warnings. Across the eastern US residents were again urged to stay inside and limit or avoid outdoor activities on Thursday, as schools in some cities closed, sporting events were canceled, and air travel was disrupted. Smoke from wildfires in Canada has been moving south into the US since May. Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires in a particularly fierce start to the summer season. The weather system driving the smoke south “will probably be hanging around at least for the next few days,” Bryan Ramsey, a US National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Associated Press. “Conditions are likely to remain unhealthy, at least until the wind direction changes or the fires get put out,” Ramsey said. Caitlin Alicia Marshall, a 21-year-old violin performance student living in New York, told the Guardian: I was out for two hours in the city on Tuesday and came back home with a very sore throat and itchy eyes. My boyfriend rushed to buy an air purifier to use at home whilst I taped the windows shut. The purifier indicated that even the air inside our apartment was dangerously affected. We didn’t leave the apartment on Wednesday out of fear it will cause us health issues down the line. Protesters are set to descend upon the White House on Thursday amid growing anger among climate activists at Joe Biden for allowing a controversial gas pipeline in Appalachia to be fast-tracked. Several hundred protesters are expected to demand Biden “reclaim his climate legacy” by blocking the Mountain Valley pipeline, a 300-mile pipeline that will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia. Organizers said they had ordered N95 masks to help protect protesters amid the air quality alerts linked to the Canadian wildfires. “They’ll be risking arrest under skies filled with smoke from wildfires fueled by the growing climate crisis,” said organizer Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media. The Mountain Valley pipeline project has been enmeshed in legal challenges for years due to opposition from grassroots groups and landowners but the deal passed by Congress to raise the US’s debt ceiling. The expediting of the pipeline provoked outrage from activists as well as some Democratic allies of Biden, with Tim Kaine, the senator from Virginia, complaining that he “strongly opposes” the decision to “green-light this pipeline without normal administrative and judicial review and ignore the voices of Virginians”. The project will lead to between 6m and 89m tons of extra planet-heating emissions should it go ahead, depending on conflicting estimates as to its impact. Norwegian officials say the smoke from Canadian wildfires that has enveloped parts of the US and Canada in a thick haze is expected to pour into Norway. Atmosphere and climate scientists with the Norwegian Climate and Environmental Research Institute used a forecast model to predict how the smoke would travel through the atmosphere. The independent research institution says the smoke has moved over Greenland and Iceland since 1 June, and observations in southern Norway have recorded increasing concentrations of aerosolized particles. A senior researcher says Norwegians might be able to see some haze or smell smoke on Thursday but that the concentration of particles isn’t expected to pose health hazards. Canada’s ongoing wildfire season is a harbinger of our climate future, experts and officials say. The fires are a “really clear sign of climate change”, said Mohammadreza Alizadeh, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal, who is also a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research shows that climate change has already exacerbated wildfires dramatically. A 2021 study supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in hot, dry fire weather in the western US. By 2090, global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change, a United Nations report warned last year. On air quality maps, purple signifies the worst of it. In reality, it’s a thick, hazardous haze that’s disrupting daily life for millions of people across the US and Canada, blotting out skylines and turning skies orange, the AP writes. Here’s more: The smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia and sending plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe. With the weather not expected to shift, this could persist into Thursday and possibly the weekend. That means at least another day, or more, of a dystopian-style detour that’s chased players from ballfields, actors from Broadway stages, delayed thousands of flights and sparked a resurgence in mask wearing and remote work — all while raising concerns about the health effects of prolonged exposure to such bad air. We have been asking Guardian readers to tell how they are dealing with the fires in Canada and the ensuing smoke. Phil Clark, who lives in Barrie, Ontario, wrote in to tell us what the situation was like where he is. On Wednesday, he wrote: “For the last three days we’ve had a haze (note that these fires are over a thousand kilometres away). Today is the worst day. Though there’s no cloud, the sun is not at all bright.” The FAA has now also paused flights from the north-east, mid-Atlantic and Ohio going to Philadelphia airport. The agency cited low visibility for the delay in air traffic. A video of the George Washington Bridge connecting New Jersey and New York City this morning gives an idea of how low visibility really is. Millions of people across North America woke up to orange skies and a smoky haze as air quality alerts continued across the US and Canada. People were urged to mask up to protect their lungs from breathing in too much polluted air. New York governor Kathy Hochul tweeted that from Thursday 1m N95 masks would be made available at state facilities. She also urged people living in the state to remain indoors: Media reports said the smog was expected to spread beyond New York to other east coast areas. Toxic air was also being reported in Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania. Large swathes of the midwest and the south also faced air quality alerts. Hundreds of uncontrolled forest fires have spread across Canada, threatening critical infrastructure and forcing evacuations. Wildfires are common in the country’s western provinces, but this year flames have rapidly spread towards the east. About 3.8m hectares (9.4m acres) have already burned, according to government ministers. The wildfires have created a blanket of smoke that has spread across several US cities, including New York, forcing residents to stay indoors. Hello and welcome to our live blog focusing on the wildfires ravaging Canada and the impact smoke from those blazes is having across the northern US. Forest fires continued to burn across Canada on Thursday as the country endured its worst-ever start to wildfire season, forcing thousands of people from their homes. In New York, authorities temporarily halted flights from the north-east, Ohio and Mid-Atlantic bound for LaGuardia Airport. The FAA said on Thursday wildfire smoke from Canada was reducing visibility and impacting US flights. The agency said it would likely need to take further steps to address traffic into New York City, Washington, Philadelphia and Charlotte, North Carolina. |
| Mike Pence: ‘Trump asked me to choose him or the constitution - I chose the constitution’ – as it happened | Chris Stein (now) and Martin Pengelly (earlier) | 2023-06-08 03:04:37 | Mike Pence is now officially on the presidential campaign trail, after kicking off his bid for the White House with a speech in Iowa where he unsurprisingly attacked Joe Biden, but also went directly at Donald Trump. Pence accused his former running mate of drifting away from conservative values and of asking him to violate the constitution, as the former vice-president sought to carve a place out for himself in the crowded Republican field. In the months to come, we’ll find out what voters think. Here’s what else happened today: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum started his own campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech in Fargo. Trump said he has not been told he is being indicted, after days of reports that prosecutors are nearing the end of their investigation into his possession of classified documents. Major East Coast cities including Washington DC and New York City are grappling with an influx of wildfire smoke that has drifted down from Canada, rendering the air quality hazardous for some groups. Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, asked for extra time to file his financial disclosures following reports that he’d accepted gifts and travel from a Republican megadonor. Ron DeSantis isn’t letting the wide gap between his second place and Trump’s lead in the polls phase him. Donald Trump says he has not been told he is being indicted, despite reports in recent days that prosecutors are nearing the conclusion of their investigation into the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort last year. Here’s what the former president wrote on his Truth social account: No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI, starting with the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, the “No Collusion” Mueller Report, Impeachment HOAX #1, Impeachment HOAX #2, the PERFECT Ukraine phone call, and various other SCAMS & WITCH HUNTS. A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE & ELECTION INTERFERENCE AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!! Earlier this week, attorneys for the former president met at justice department headquarters in Washington DC with top officials, including Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to handle the investigation into the classified documents, as well as Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the plot to overturn the 2020 election result. Such meetings typically take place before charging decisions are announced in federal investigations. Today, an aide to the former president, Taylor Budowich, said he had spoken to a grand jury investigating Trump. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has reported the Budowich was among those summoned by federal prosecutors to appear before a new grand jury convened in Florida, which is focusing on Trump’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice. It remains unclear what that grand jury’s empaneling implies for the status of the overall investigation, but you can read more about it here: Ron DeSantis doesn’t appear to be too worried about trailing Donald Trump in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, and claims to be “really excited” about the enthusiasm he believes he has generated. Florida’s governor, who entered the race with a glitch-ridden launch event on Twitter last month, has just been speaking at a immigration roundtable in Arizona, and was asked by a reporter about his numbers. “Did you just see the Iowa polls that just came out?” DeSantis said, presumably referring to his own internal polling, reported by the New York Post, that purportedly shows him gaining ground on the former president in the state. “We can talk about polls all day long. You’ve seen some some great stuff. When you run in these things, you run and you persuade people. I mean, that’s the whole point of it. Like you don’t do a poll a year out and say that that’s how the election runs out. “If that were the case, you know, I wouldn’t have been elected in the first place as governor, and even my reelection I had people saying we were going to win by a couple of percentage points. We won by 20. “So we’re really excited about the enthusiasm we’ve generated. I think you’re gonna see a lot of really good stuff over the ensuing weeks and months.” The latest polling by Real Clear Politics for the Republican nomination has Trump at 53% and DeSantis at 22. The academic and public intellectual Cornel West could pose a threat to Joe Biden’s hold on the White House, the former Trump strategist Kellyanne Conway said – not because West’s People’s Party candidacy has a chance of winning the race but because it could draw young voters and voters of colour away from the Democratic president. “Even if you don’t become president, you, as a third-party candidate spoiler, can decide who is the president,” Conway told Fox News. Conway gave the example of Ross Perot, the millionaire businessman whose third-party run is widely held to have cost George HW Bush dear in 1992, when he was turfed out of the White House by Bill Clinton. Other third-party candidates who have had an impact on presidential races include Ralph Nader, widely held to have damaged Al Gore in the knife-edge 2000 election against George W Bush. In 2016, when Conway managed Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, both the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, and the Green candidate, Jill Stein, made an impact at the polls in states that decided the contest. Conway continued: “It’s important also … that if you play to win and you’re Cornel West, and you are still not satisfied with the trajectory of the Democratic party being progressive enough for you under a Biden-Harris administration, then you’re going to run to the left of them.” West, Conway said, is “going to make a play for people who feel forgotten, who feel abandoned by this Democratic party, who feel like nobody’s listening to them and including them. “It’s part of how Trump won in 2016, but I think he could do it from the left. “I know him. He’s a super-smart guy. He’s very committed to the principles and policies that he thinks more Americans want to hear.” The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has asked for extra time to file his financial disclosures, records keenly awaited amid the ongoing scandal concerning his links to, and extensive gifts from, the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow. Crow and another conservative on the court, Samuel Alito, asked for 90 more days to file their annual financial disclosures, the Washington Post reported. The Post added: “Both requests were confirmed by the Administrative Office of the US Courts on Wednesday, the same day that disclosure reports filed by their court colleagues were posted on the court system’s website.” As the Post also said, the supreme court “is under increasing pressure from Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates to strengthen disclosure rules and adopt ethics guidelines specific to the justices after news reports revealed Thomas’s undisclosed real estate deals and private jet travel, and raised questions about the recusal practices of both conservative and liberal justices”. Crow is the subject of attempts by Senate Democrats to obtain details of gifts given to Thomas. Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judgs but in practise govern themselves. Thomas and Crow deny wrongdoing. Thomas has said he did not declare extensive and costly gifts from Crow because he was advised he did not have to. In a statement after news of Thomas’s request for an extension, Kyle Herrig, president of the pressure group Accountable.US, said: “Justice Thomas and his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow can’t dodge accountability forever. It was their decades-long improper relationship that sparked the supreme court corruption crisis in the first place. “What more is Thomas trying to hide? Are his gifts and connections so extensive that he needs more time to account for them all? Chief Justice [John] Roberts needs to act immediately to clean up his court.” Further reading: Mike Pence is now officially on the presidential campaign trail, kicking off his bid for the White House with a speech in Iowa where he unsurprisingly attacked Joe Biden, but also went directly at Donald Trump. He accused his former running mate of drifting away from conservative values and asking him to violate the constitution in an attempt to carve a place out for himself in the crowded Republican field. In the months to come, we’ll find out what voters think. Here’s what else has happened today so far: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum started his own campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech in Fargo. An aide to Trump confirmed he had spoken to a grand jury that the Guardian reports has been empaneled in Florida to look into the former president’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice. It’s really smoky on the East Coast. Also, a volcano is erupting in Hawaii, and you can watch it happen live. A major Pac supporting Donald Trump has responded to Mike Pence’s campaign announcement with a statement that dismisses both him and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. “Mike Pence’s entrance into the race caps off another bad week for Ron DeSantis’ faltering campaign, but the question most GOP voters are asking themselves about Pence’s candidacy is ‘Why?’” Make America Great Again Inc spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. As Pence’s speech wrapped up, he accused Donald Trump and Joe Biden of being too mean to lead. “Joe Biden promised to restore decency and civility if he was elected president. He broke that promise on day one. He’s continually vilified those of us that disagree with him, and even vilified members of his own party,” Pence said. ‘Our politics are more divided than ever before, but I’m not convinced our country is as divided as our politics. Most Americans treat each other with kindness and respect even when we disagree. We know how to be good neighbors. That’s not too much to ask our leaders to do the same. But sadly, it’s clear that neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump share this belief.” Pence is taking both Joe Biden and Donald Trump to task over their approach to managing the US government’s debt and spending, and their support for Ukraine. “Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency,” Pence said, after recounting the looming challenges the massive government Social Security and Medicare problems face. “But you deserve to know, my fellow Republicans, that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is the same. Both of them refuse to even talk about the issue taken to the American people.” He then turned to both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the possibility of war with China. “America is the leader of the free world. We’re the arsenal of democracy … Donald Trump and others who would seek the presidency would walk away from our traditional role on the world stage,” Pence said. “President Trump, he described Vladimir Putin as a ‘genius’ at the outset of the invasion and another candidate for the Republican nomination described the invasion of Ukraine as a quote, territorial dispute,” he continued in a reference to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a competitor for the Republican nomination. “I know the difference between a genius, I know the difference between a territorial dispute and a war of aggression. The war in Ukraine is not our war but freedom is our fight and America must always stand for freedom, and when I’m your president, we will.” One more broadside at Trump: “What President Trump and others are forgetting is that our administration succeeded not because we compromised or abandoned conservative principles, but because we acted,” Pence said. Pence hasn’t held back on criticizing Joe Biden. Earlier in the speech, he decried his “disastrous presidency”, and promised to, if elected, lower taxes, “give the American people freedom from excessive federal regulations” and end Biden’s “trillion-dollar spending spree that’s driving inflation”. But Pence also needs to get through a crowded Republican primary field that includes Donald Trump if he wants to appear on the general election ballot, and the former vice-president has spent a considerable portion of his speech criticizing his ex-boss. “You know, when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. Together, we did just that. Today, he makes no such promise,” Pence said. “After leaving the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn. Sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for a half-a-century, long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now he treats it is an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v Wade,” he continued. “Mr. President, I will always stand for the sanctity of life, and I will not rest and I will not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land,” Pence said. What he did not say: whether he would sign a federal law banning abortion. As Pence continues his speech, his strategy for taking on Donald Trump has become clear. The former vice-president is touting the Trump administration’s accomplishments, while simultaneously portraying his former running mate as straying from true conservative principles. “I’ll always be grateful for what president Trump did for this country. I’ve often prayed for him over the past few years. And I prayed for him again today. I had hoped he would come around, see that he had been misled about my role that day,” Pence said, referring to January 6. “The Republican party must be the party of the constitution of the United States. We’ve had enough of the Democrats in the radical left repeatedly trampling on our constitution, threatening to pack the court, to dismantle the God given rights that are enshrined,” Pence continued, saying the GOP must protect the “right to life” as well as keep firearms freely available. And then he again turned to Trump. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again,” Pence said. “Our liberties have been bought at too high a price.” Mike Pence continued by getting into the technical details of why he could not overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. “Article two, section one of the constitution provides that the president of the Senate, the vice-president, shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House, open all the certificates and the votes shall be counted. No more no less. Despite the fact that the constitution’s language is clear, and provides the vice-president with no authority to reject or return electoral votes, my former running mate continues to insist that I had the right to overturn the election,” he said. “But president Trump was wrong then, and he’s wrong now.” He then sought to redirect the crowd’s attention to his vow to defeat Joe Biden. “I will always believe, by God’s grace, I did my duty that day. I kept my oath to ensure the peaceful transfer of power under the constitution of the United States,” Pence said. “I understand the disappointment that many still feel (about) the outcome of the 2020 election. I can relate, I was on the ballot. But I had no right to overturn the election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.” Mike Pence directly addressed the rivalry between him and Donald Trump, saying on January 6, his then-boss asked him to “choose between him and the constitution.” “January 6 was a tragic day in the life of our nation,” Pence began. “As I’ve said many times, on that fateful day, president Trump’s words were reckless. They endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol. But the American people deserve to know that on that day, president Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the constitution. Now, voters will be faced with the same choice: I chose the constitution and I always will.” Mike Pence just uttered the magic words. “I’ve long believed that to much is given, much will be required. That’s why today, before God and my family, I’m announcing that I’m running for president of the United States of America,” he said, to applause. Mike Pence has been the subject of Donald Trump’s ire ever since defying him on January 6, but in his ongoing presidential campaign launch speech, he just spoke proudly of his time in the White House. “I was proud to stand by President Donald Trump every single day when we made America great again,” Pence said, after detailing his time as a congressman and as governor of Indiana. It’s quite a reversal from just a few months ago, when Pence said, “President Trump was wrong … his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.” Mike Pence is now onstage after being introduced by his wife, former first lady of the United States Karen Pence. And he’s kicking off his speech with what seems like a zing at his former boss Donald Trump – a prolific user of Twitter during his presidency. “Indiana will always be home for us, and I get why people make big announcements back home, in their hometown, at their resort, even on Twitter,” Pence said. “But we wanted to be here, in person, in Iowa. We are here because we know that Iowa was the right place to start our engines for the great American comeback.” For a second there, you would think you were listening to a Democrat. Greg Pence directly referenced his brother’s defiance of Donald Trump on January 6, though he didn’t mention the ex-president by name. “Mike is a man who will unflinchingly stand his post. And if you’re a veteran like myself, and you know the sixth general order. The sixth general order says I will not leave my post until properly relieved. My brother never did on January 6. In the face of those who would seek to bend his iron-tested character, Mike Pence never wavered. That strength and courage will lead America back to greatness and again, it’s what we need today.” And then he went back to the usual Republican talking points against Joe Biden. “We know under Joe Biden America has become a troubled nation. Our economy is in distress. Inflation is at record high. Wages are down, my utility bills have gone through the roof, our borders wide open to illegal immigrants and dangerous drugs, and fentanyl is killing our youth,” Pence continued. “These difficult times call for new leadership, ladies and gentlemen. In Michael,” as his older brother calls him, “I see the steady hand our country needs in these time of turmoil.” Mike Pence’s presidential launch event has kicked off with a speech by another Pence: his brother, Republican Indiana congressman Greg Pence. “The Pence family is from southern Indiana so I’m real comfortable with the corn here in Iowa,” Pence began, declining to mention Iowa’s role as the first state to vote in the Republican nominating process. “I can’t be more proud than to be here and stand with my brother in this race that he is starting off today,” Pence continued, adding that no other “Republican in this field has the ability to defeat Joe Biden, other than my brother. He will turn our country around.” Republican former vice-president Mike Pence is in a few minutes scheduled to deliver his presidential campaign launch address in Ankeny, Iowa. Will the well-known anti-abortion politician vow to crack down on the procedure nationwide? Will he attack his former boss Donald Trump, or discuss how he stood up to him on January 6? We’ll find out soon. Follow along here for the latest, or watch it live at the video embedded at the top of this page. Here’s the moment North Dakota governor Doug Burgum made his presidential campaign official, during a speech in Fargo: We expect former vice-president Mike Pence to say the same words pretty soon, in a speech in Iowa. Taylor Budowich, an aide to Donald Trump, confirmed that he spoke to a federal grand jury today and characterized the investigation as an effort to “use the power of government to ‘get’”, the former president. Here’s Budowich’s full statement: Earlier today, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported the Budowich was among those summoned by federal prosecutors to appear before a new grand jury convened in Florida, which is focusing on Trump’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice: We’re about an hour away from Mike Pence’s campaign launch in Iowa, and a CBS News reporter at the event noticed something telling in his campaign’s arrangements for the media. As noted below, the password for the wifi provided to journalists seems to be a reference to Pence’s refusal to go along with Trump’s demand that he block Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election win on January 6: This is not the first time a wifi password has referenced January 6. Here’s a throwback to a NBC News reporter’s tweet from two days before the insurrection: That said, when Pence released his campaign launch video this morning, he did not mention his actions during the attack on the Capitol. If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch it here: Let’s step back from politics for a minute to look at what life is like right now in America, 517 days away from the 2024 elections. A huge swath of the country is under air quality alerts due to smoke from Canadian wildfires that has drifted along the eastern seaboard, affecting tens of millions of people, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports from New York City: Tens of millions of people in the US were under air quality alerts on Wednesday, as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, turning the sky in some of the country’s biggest cities a murky brown and saturating the air with harmful pollution. States across the east, including New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, issued air quality alerts, with officials recommending that people limit outdoor activity. In New York City, where conditions were expected to deteriorate further through the day, residents were urged to limit their time outdoors, as public schools canceled outdoor activities. Smoke from wildfires in Canada has been moving south into the US since May. Hundreds of fires are burning in Canada, from the western provinces to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east, where there are more than 150 active fires in a particularly fierce start to the summer season. And the country’s farthest western flank is dealing with its own unique environmental event: an erupting volcano. Lava began pouring out of Kīlauea on Hawaii’s Big Island this morning, and you can watch the flow live below: You’ve heard the arguments detailing why Republicans probably won’t vote for Mike Pence – now, have a look at the reasons why progressives will not, under any circumstances, give their backing to Donald Trump’s former deputy. “For years, Mike Pence stood shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump, helping him win in 2016 and turning a blind eye to astonishing abuses of presidential power. Pence remained by Trump’s side as he sowed distrust in our electoral process and attacked the very foundations of American democracy,” Sean Eldridge, the president and founder of progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said in a just-released statement that’s typical of the sentiment towards the former vice-president. Eldridge continues: While he ultimately made the right choice on January 6, 2021, Mike Pence has done more to imperil our democracy and our freedoms than to protect them. As a congressman, governor, and vice president, Pence championed policies at the heart of the MAGA agenda that undermine Americans’ fundamental freedoms, from the right to an abortion to the freedom to marry the person you love. Americans deserve a president who will stand up for our democracy and our freedoms. Mike Pence’s record shows that he is not that leader. Here’s more on that choice Pence made on January 6, which even his detractors give him credit for: Donald Trump’s campaign is out with a new ad titled “Wolves”, though the most interesting thing about it is not its many shots of the quadrupedal canine native to North America. Rather, it’s how the ad makes prominent Trump’s involvement in the overturning of Roe v Wade. While many GOP candidates are in favor of abortion restrictions, the subject has become an awkward one given the apparent unpopularity of such measures at the polls. The Trump ad mentions the overturning of Roe v Wade right at the beginning – though it doesn’t elaborate on what restrictions he would support if returned to the White House, a question Trump has avoided answering. Watch the ad here: He may have plenty of competition, but polls indicate the frontrunner for the Republican nomination remains Donald Trump – despite all the legal trouble he appears to be in. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more details on a new grand jury convened in Florida to investigate his conduct: Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed multiple witnesses to testify before a previously unknown grand jury in Florida in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of national security materials and obstruction of justice, according to people familiar with the matter. The new grand jury activity at the US district court in Miami marks the latest twist in the investigation that for months has involved a grand jury that had been taking evidence in the case in Washington but has been silent since the start of last month. Trump aide Taylor Budowich is scheduled to testify before the Florida grand jury on Wednesday, one of the people said, and questioning is expected to be led by Jay Bratt, the justice department’s counterintelligence chief detailed to the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation. CNN has played a big role in the presidential campaign thus far by hosting town halls with GOP candidates Donald Trump, Nikki Haley as well as other candidates to come. But its handling of the event with Trump was deeply controversial, and a candid magazine profile of CEO Chris Licht did not help matters. Today, reports emerged that Licht would be stepping down: Chris Licht, the controversial and embattled chairman and chief executive officer of the cable news giant CNN is stepping aside after a very short, turbulent time at the top, according to a report on Wednesday morning. Licht will leave and be replaced within 48 hours, Puck News reported. Licht was under siege from within and apologized to his employees on Monday after an Atlantic magazine profile revealed he had been aware of the “extra-Trumpy” make-up of the crowd at a widely criticized town hall with former president Donald Trump last month. According to the Atlantic, Licht had also been critical of CNN’s performance under his predecessor, telling employees they had alienated potential viewers through hostility to Donald Trump. His tenure also included the sacking of senior presenters, and widespread unrest as he pursued a stated goal of bringing the network more into the center of US political discourse and winning over Republicans. North Dakota governor Doug Burgum has made his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination official by filing with the Federal Election Commission. If you’re wondering who he is – and you probably are, since he leads a state that ranks 47th for population in the country and doesn’t have much of a national profile otherwise – the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly is here with the answer: Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, has announced his candidacy for the party’s presidential nomination next year. Burgum made the announcement in the the Wall Street Journal newspaper. A campaign event is scheduled for later on Wednesday in the city of Fargo. “We need a change in the White House. We need a new leader for a changing economy. That’s why I’m announcing my run for president,” he said in a commentary on the Journal’s website. The 66-year-old was a software entrepreneur, Microsoft executive and venture capitalist before becoming governor in 2016. He will be a rank outsider in a race dominated by two candidates: former US president Donald Trump and rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Mike Pence’s problem, as this Atlantic article bluntly puts it in its headline, is that “nobody likes” him. The author sat in on focus groups of two-time Donald Trump voters in various parts of the country. The participants held various perspectives on the former president, but when it came to Pence, the derision was practically unanimous: “I don’t care for him … He’s just middle-of-the-road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I wouldn’t vote for him.” “He has alienated every Republican and Democrat … It’s over. It’s retirement time.” “He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him.” “He just needs to go away.” As Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman puts it, it’s a mystery why Pence is bothering to run at all: The problem is that there is almost no significant group of voters who does not already dislike Pence for one reason or another. While Trump added him to his 2016 ticket to shore up support with the Christian right, that group’s loyalty to Trump grew so intense that Pence became an afterthought. The Trump presidency showed that what evangelicals wanted was not someone who believed what they believe, but someone who would smite their enemies with maximum savagery. Then there’s Jan. 6, 2021. The most conservative Republicans, whom Pence would want to appeal to, are now more fervently pro-Trump than ever. They are also the ones who call Pence a traitor because of the best thing he did as vice president: resisting Trump’s corrupt pressure to delay the electoral count in Congress so that the former president could overturn the outcome. When Jan. 6 is inevitably brought up, Pence will become trapped. He says (correctly) that the law gave him no authority to halt the count. But that makes it sound as though his loyalty to rules outweighed his loyalty to Trump. Which was true, at least in that moment. But Trump taught the base that rules are for suckers. The other option — to portray himself as a hero who saved democracy in the face of Trump’s corruption — isn’t possible either because it would define Trump as democracy’s enemy. After years of sycophancy toward his boss that was embarrassing — even by the standards of the lickspittles with whom Trump has always surrounded himself — Pence just doesn’t have it in him to defy Trump, even if he didn’t have to say the last thing Republican voters want to hear. Mike Pence will launch his presidential campaign today in Ankeny, Iowa, with a speech set to begin at 1pm eastern time. A former governor of Indiana who also served in the House of Representatives for 12 years, this will be Pence’s first solo run for the White House, after standing twice as Donald Trump’s running mate. If his kickoff video is any indication, you won’t be hearing much about Pence’s former boss when he launches the campaign. “I’ll always be proud of the progress we made together,” Pence says, without saying who he made the progress with. He continues: “Different times call for different leadership. Today our country and our party need a leader that can appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.” There’s not a glimpse of Trump in the video, but plenty of shots of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – foes he will face only if he somehow manages to beat his former boss in the Republican primary. Good morning, US politics blog readers. Republican politicians are practically flocking to join the presidential race, with former vice-president Mike Pence announcing his intention to run in a video this morning that’s heavy on God and critical of Joe Biden – the general election opponent he would face if Pence makes it that far. Standing in his way is Donald Trump, who remains the frontrunner in the polls, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis the only other candidate to crack double-digit support in most surveys out there. Pence, you will recall, was Trump’s deputy, but fell out with him after refusing to take part in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. As a result, Trump has turned his influential base against Pence, but he’s giving it a shot anyway. Also throwing their hat in the ring today: low-profile North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who this morning filed papers to run for the White House. Here’s what else is happening today: Are rightwing Republicans revolting in the House of Representatives against speaker Kevin McCarthy? They did yesterday, by blocking debate on a package of messaging bills the chamber’s GOP leaders were hoping to pass. We may find out more about this today. CNN announced it will next Monday host a live town hall with Chris Christie, the Republican former New Jersey governor who yesterday announced his candidacy for president. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talks to reporters at 1pm eastern time. |
Fantastic, this illustrates one way that we can download a lot of text data from newspapers. How we analyze this is a separate question, which we will get to in later weeks!
Lastly, I’d like to note that one of the most popular and interesting sources for online text analysis is Twitter. Twitter has an API for academic researchers to use this information, and would be a great resource for final projects. In this week’s problem set, we’ll apply for Twitter APIs!
2.4 Web Scraping
Another method for gathering data from the internet is called web scraping. In the “wild west” days of the internet, sites were fairly disconnected and scraping was an acceptable way to gather information from sites. In the modern day, many sites disallow web scraping, and offer APIs as alternatives. Therefore, it is important to check that you are not violating terms of agreement in scraping websites. You can check a site’s regulations by typing the website and adding “robots.txt” to the end of the url. For example, if we go to https://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt we see that some crawlers and bots have been banned for going to fast or for other actions, but they do not list any total restrictions on scraping.
To try scraping a Wikipedia page, we will first download and library the rvest package.
Great! Now we can try reading an HTML file (the language behind a website, which tells your browser the meaning and structure of the site) into R. It will work best for us to read in a Wikipedia page with a table, so let’s try the costliest disasters in history.
# read in html
us_disasters <- read_html("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_the_United_States")
# take a look
us_disasters## {html_document}
## <html class="client-nojs vector-feature-language-in-header-enabled vector-feature-language-in-main-page-header-disabled vector-feature-sticky-header-disabled vector-feature-page-tools-pinned-disabled vector-feature-toc-pinned-enabled vector-feature-main-menu-pinned-disabled vector-feature-limited-width-enabled vector-feature-limited-width-content-enabled vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled" lang="en" dir="ltr">
## [1] <head>\n<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8 ...
## [2] <body class="skin-vector skin-vector-search-vue mediawiki ltr sitedir-ltr ...Hmmmm, it’s not really in a readable format. But that’s ok! In order to extract our table of interest, we just need to gather a little more information:
- Go to the page of interest and find the table that we want to extract
- Right click the table and click inspect
- Find the <table… element of interest in the Element pane on the right-hand side. When you hold your mouse over this text, it should highlight the entire table on the left-hand side
- Right-click the table element, Copy -> Copy Xpath
Great, now that we have the Xpath copied we can use rvest’s html_nodes() function to extract just the html of interest.
# extract nodes of interest
us_disasters_table <- html_nodes(us_disasters,
xpath = '//*[@id="mw-content-text"]/div[1]/table[3]')
# take another lookIt is still in html format, but there is another function, html_table(), which will convert this to a dataframe. Let’s try it!
# convert object to table
us_disasters_table %<>%
html_table()
#take another look
us_disasters_table %>%
head()## [[1]]
## # A tibble: 173 × 7
## Year Disaster `Death toll` `Damage costUS$` `Main article` Location Notes
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 2023 Tornado ou… 33 "$4.3 billion" Tornado outbr… Souther… ""
## 2 2023 Tornado ou… 25 "$1.9 billion" Tornado outbr… Souther… "Inc…
## 3 2023 Flooding a… 13 "$4.5 billion" Early-March 2… Southwe… ""
## 4 2023 Derecho, T… 14 "" February 2023… Western… ""
## 5 2022 Winter sto… 106 "$5.4 billion" December 2022… Western… ""
## 6 2022 Earthquake 2 "" 2022 Ferndale… North C… ""
## 7 2022 Winter sto… 4 "" November 2022… Great L… ""
## 8 2022 Hurricane 11 "≥ $1 billion" Hurricane Nic… Dominic… "Nic…
## 9 2022 Hurricane 157+ "≥ $113.1 billi… Hurricane Ian Trinida… "Hur…
## 10 2022 Hurricane 25 "≥$5.88 billion" Hurricane Fio… Puerto … ""
## # ℹ 163 more rowsThis looks better. But notice the [[1]]? This means that our table is still technically in list format, and that this is the first element of a list. We will change that below with the as.data.frame() function.
Also, you might be wondering, what is a tibble? According to CRAN, “Tibbles are a modern take on data frames. They keep the features that have stood the test of time, and drop the features that used to be convenient but are now frustrating.” For our purposes, we can treat them just like dataframes.
# convert list to dataframe
us_disasters_table %<>%
as.data.frame()
# take another look
us_disasters_table %>%
head()## Year Disaster Death.toll Damage.costUS.
## 1 2023 Tornado outbreak 33 $4.3 billion
## 2 2023 Tornado outbreak 25 $1.9 billion
## 3 2023 Flooding and Tornado outbreak 13 $4.5 billion
## 4 2023 Derecho, Tornado outbreak and Winter storm 14
## 5 2022 Winter storm 106 $5.4 billion
## 6 2022 Earthquake 2
## Main.article
## 1 Tornado outbreak of March 31 – April 1, 2023
## 2 Tornado outbreak of March 24–27, 2023
## 3 Early-March 2023 North American storm complex
## 4 February 2023 North American storm complex
## 5 December 2022 North American winter storm
## 6 2022 Ferndale earthquake
## Location
## 1 Southern United States, Midwestern United States
## 2 Southern United States
## 3 Southwestern United States, Southeastern United States
## 4 Western United States, Southern United States and Midwestern United States
## 5 Western United States, Midwestern United States, Great Lakes region (especially the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area), Canada
## 6 North Coast, California, United States
## Notes
## 1
## 2 Includes the 2023 Rolling Fork—Silver City tornado.
## 3
## 4
## 5
## 6Ok perfect, now we have a true dataframe. In order to look at our data, we should clean it up a bit first. We’ll start by creating new variables which convert Year and Death.toll to numeric values (which are easier to work with).
# create new variables
us_disasters_table %<>%
mutate(year = as.numeric(Year),
death_toll = as.numeric(Death.toll))You will get some warning messages like “NAs introduced by coercion.” What do you think this means?
For now we will move on. Now that we have some numeric variables, we can make some simple plots. First, let’s look at the counts of disasters by year.
library(ggplot2)
# first, we can plot a histogram of disaster years
ggplot(us_disasters_table, aes(x = year))+
geom_histogram()+
labs(x = "Year")
It seems that disasters are really increasing in frequency in the 2000’s! This might make sense to us given what we know about climate change. But should we also be skeptical of this result?
Let’s look at the disaster death tolls over the years.
# now, we can look at death tolls across years
ggplot(us_disasters_table, aes(x = year, y = death_toll))+
geom_point()+
labs(x = "Year", y = "Death Toll")
Interesting! It seems as though most of the recent disasters have lower death tolls than historic events. It could be the case that our modern infrastructure protects people today better than it used to when disasters hit. But a more likely explanation is that we don’t have records of all the small-scale events of previous decades and centuries, at least on a place like Wikipedia. That is, we likely have non-random missingness in our data. Wherever we gather data, we should be wary of this, but especially when we gather data from websites and organizations where the data was not created for researchers.
2.5 Disasters, Risk, and Resillience
In this section, we’ve focused on information around extinction and disasters. We’ll cover these more in future weeks, but for now, let’s define some key terms and frameworks for understanding these.
Biodiversity loss is the reduction of genes, species, and traits in an ecosystem. We are currently in the middle of earth’s sixth mass extinction event, in which most vertabrates are experiencing decline in population sizes and ranges. Mounting evidence shows that ecosystems function more efficiently and are more stable with greater biodiversity, and that change in an ecosystem can accelerate, and can become more unpredictable, with biodiversity loss. In other words, changes in earth’s ecology could have wide-ranging impacts. Researchers have also noted that “the impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change.”
The news on biodiversity can be dismal … but conservation efforts have paid off in some cases! Below is a chart documenting the return of the California Condor. (Source)
Risks are probabilities that people or places will be affected by events such as natural disasters. In a famous sociological work called Risk Society, Ulrich Beck defines “risk positions” as individuals’ social locations in relation to various risks. Beck argues that in modernity, society will be organized largely according to risk positions, rather than class positions. That is - people’s proximity to dangers such as flooding or wildfires may determine their life outcomes more so than their wealth. As Paprocki, Cohen, Koslov and Elliott noted in one of our first readings, the consequences of climate change sometimes correspond to social class (i.e. more advantaged countries or people are able to leverage resources to avoid climate dangers), but sometimes are distributed across nations and people. Wildfire smoke might be an example of the latter case, particularly if it is unexpected and people are unable to prepare. Beck captures this idea by stating that while “poverty is hierarchic, smog is democratic.”
We can also think about risks and how they are connected with places. Floodplains are a great example of this - state and local governments are tasked with creating risk distribution maps at various levels (not in any floodplain, 100-year floodplain and 500-year floodplain, as well as more detailed assessments). These estimates are then used by FEMA to produce insurance rates for homeowners in the floodplain. However, many of these estimates may be incorrect (see this article) or the insurance rates may be adjusted in ways that do not reflect the real risks (we will read about this a little bit in the coming week). A critical sociology of risk interrogates the power structures that produce risks, including governments and other institutions, and how these relate to inequalities in society.
Resilience is the ability to withstand or avoid the negative consequences of disasters. Resilience might vary across age, gender, race, health, and other social characteristics. As sociologists, we note that differences in resilience are often not due to individual actions, but the social structures they are embedded in. For example, in his book Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg investigates differences in death rates between two Chicago neighborhoods with relatively similar levels of economic disadvantage, aging populations, and location in the urban space. He finds social networks in one neighborhood - which resulted from a vibrant commercial district, public spaces, and reduced fears of crime - drove neighbors to check on each other, preventing many deaths that otherwise would have occurred. While age put some individuals at higher risk of heat stroke, their social ties enabled or prevented resilience.
Across populations, sociologists sometimes discuss resilience as segmented. This means that groups experience different levels of resilience, and can lead to changes in the overall social structure of the place. For example, certain economic or ethnoracial groups may experience displacement at higher rates than others, or some groups may choose to leave a place while others remain. In the readings for the coming week, we’ll learn a bit more about Hurricane Katrina and the social changes that took place in New Orleans after this catastrophic event.
2.6 Problem Set 2
Due: July 10th, 2023
Recommended Resources:
How to Get Access to the Twitter API
Optional: Academic Research with Twitter API V2
A note: this assignment and future assignments should be submitted as PDF or HTML documents generated using R Markdown or a Jupyter Notebook. If you experience issues creating these files, come to office hours or reach out!
Load the temps.csv dataframe into your environment. Write a function that transforms the Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius, and create a new variable for the Celsius temperatures.
Try out the
gtrendsRpackage! Load it into your machine, library it, and try searching for one or more environmental keywords of your choosing (e.g. “carbon sequestration”, “hurricane harvey”, “fossil fuels”, “climate justice”, etc.). Plot these keywords over time, and see if you can explain the spikes and dips in searches.Apply for a Twitter Developer Account. You should get an email that your application has been sent. Take a screenshot and include it in your R Markdown or Jupyter Notebook.Nevermind! Apparently the main research functions are no longer free :(Download us_disasters_table.csv from Canvas. Create a new variable (you may want to use the
mutatefunction) callednew_cost, which takesDamage.cost.USand converts it to numeric values. You can use themoney_numericfunction below to do so.
library(stringr)
# function to conver "X billion" or "Y million" into numeric values
money_numeric <- function(money){
# get numeric amount (we will use the first cost provided, although this may cause issues)
num <- str_extract(money, "\\$([0-9,.]+)")
# remove the dollar sign
num %<>%
str_remove_all("\\$")
# get the million/billion value
order <- str_extract(money, "million|billion")
# replace these with appropriate number of zeros
order %<>%
str_replace("million", "1000000") %>%
str_replace("billion", "1000000000")
# create value
val = as.numeric(num)*as.numeric(order)
return(val)
}Examine the new cost variable using the View() function. Do you feel that the function did a reasonable job of converting the damage costs into numeric values? Why or why not?
Using the same data, with the new cost variable, plot damage costs alongside one of the other variables. What type of relationship do you see? Are there reasons we should trust, or not trust, this apparent relationship?
Choose an API from one of the lists above, such as The Guardian API, or one that you find on your own. Try to download some data! Show a snippet of this data (for example, using the
head()function), and comment on the types of questions that you might answer with it. You don’t need to do any data cleaning or analysis yourself for this question.