Fracking pioneer Chesapeake files for bankruptcy protection

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ and TALI ARBEL yesterday

FILE - In this April 23, 2010, file photo, workers move a section of well casing into place at a Chesapeake Energy natural gas well site near Burlington, Pa., in Bradford County. Chesapeake Energy, a shale drilling pioneer that helped to turn the United States into a global energy powerhouse, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The Oklahoma City-based company said Sunday, June 28, 2020, that it was a necessary decision given its debt. Its debt load is currently nearing $9 billion. (AP Photo/Ralph Wilson, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Chesapeake Energy, a shale drilling pioneer that helped to turn the United States into a global energy powerhouse, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Oklahoma City-based company said Sunday that it was a necessary decision given its debt. Its debt load is currently nearing $9 billion. It has entered a plan with lenders to cut $7 billion of its debt and said it will continue to operate as usual during the bankruptcy process.

The oil and gas company was a leader in the fracking boom, using unconventional techniques to extract oil and gas from the ground, a method that has come under scrutiny because of its environmental impact.

Other wildcatters followed in Chesapeake’s path, racking up huge debts to find oil and gas in fields spanning New Mexico, Texas, the Dakotas and Pennsylvania. A reckoning is now coming due with those massive debts needing to be serviced by Chesapeake and those that followed its path.

More than 200 oil producers have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past five years, a trend that’s expected to continue as a global pandemic saps demand for energy and depresses prices further.

Founded in 1989 with an initial $50,000 investment, Chesapeake focused on drilling in underdeveloped areas of Oklahoma and Texas. It largely abandoned traditional vertical well drilling, employing instead lateral drilling techniques to free natural gas from unconventional shale formations.

It became a colossus in the energy markets, eventually reaching a market valuation of more than $37 billion. Then, the first in a series of financial shocks hit Chesapeake as the Great Recession sent energy prices into the basement.

The company closed Friday valued at around $115 million.

Chesapeake grew with lightning speed under one-time CEO Aubrey McClendon, known for his aggressiveness acquiring oil and gas drilling rights. He pushed the company to acquire enormous tracks of land in several states, taking on mounting debt along the way. Chesapeake in some ways became a victim of its own success as other companies followed its lead and U.S. energy production soared, driving down prices.

As Chesapeake was expanding at breakneck speed, natural gas prices were near $20 per million British thermal units, the benchmark for natural gas trading. But frackers like Chesapeake flooded the market with cheap natural gas, sending prices to well under $2.

McClendon left the company in 2013 with questions swirling about its business practices. On March 1, 2016, McClendon was indicted on a charge of conspiring to rig bids on energy leases in Oklahoma. McClendon died the following day, the single occupant in his Chevrolet Tahoe that smashed into a concrete viaduct at nearly 90 mph.

The coroner ruled his death an accident.

Chesapeake has paid millions of dollars since to settle charges of bid rigging.

Robert Lawler became CEO after McClendon’s death and began selling off assets to get Chesapeake’s debt under control. But that debt grew more threatening within two years as the fracking boom turn to a bust in 2015. Chesapeake reported a quarterly loss of $4 billion that year and the first wave of layoffs began with 750 jobs.

Despite Chespeake’s problems, Lawler last year remained the highest-paid CEO in Oklahoma with $15.4 million in compensation, according to a ranking compiled by The Associated Press and Equilar.

Chesapeake lost an eye-popping $8.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, and it listed $8.62 billion in net debt. The company said in a regulatory filing in May that “management has concluded that there is substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

___ This story has been corrected to show that Chesapeake went from vertical to lateral drilling, not horizontal drilling.

Thunberg has hope for climate, despite leaders’ inaction
By FRANK JORDANS June 20, 2020

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Climate activist Greta Thunberg during a radio statement at the 'Sveriges Radio' in Stockholm, Sweden, Sunday, June 14, 2020. In a wide-ranging monologue on Swedish public radio, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg recounts how world leaders queued up to have their picture taken with her even as they shied away from acknowledging the grim scientific fact that time is running out to curb global warming. (Photo/Mattias Osterlund)

BERLIN (AP) — Preparing for her appearance before the U.N. General Assembly last fall, Greta Thunberg found herself constantly interrupted by world leaders, including U.N. chief Antonio Guterres and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had formed a queue to speak to her and take selfies.

“Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, waits in line but doesn’t quite make it before it’s time for the event to start,” Thunberg recalls.

Such surreal memories for a teenager form the opening to a 75-minute monologue broadcast on Swedish public radio Saturday that soon shifts to the serious matter of climate change that’s at the heart of Thunberg’s work.

The 17-year-old has become a global figurehead of the youth climate movement since she started her one-woman protests outside the Swedish parliament in 2018.

Thunberg’s blunt words to presidents and prime ministers, peppered with scientific facts about the need to urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions, have won her praise and awards, but also the occasionalpushback and even death threats.

To Thunberg’s disappointment, her message doesn’t seem to be getting through even to those leaders who applaud her work.

The message is certainly stark: Thunberg cites a U.N. report that estimates the world can only keep emitting the current amount of carbon dioxide for the next seven-and-a-half years. Any longer and it becomes impossible to meet the Paris climate accord’s ambitious goal of keeping global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century.

Most governments refuse to accept the idea that the world has only a fixed “carbon budget” left, because it implies that a sudden shift away from fossil fuel will need to happen in just a few years.

“Do you remember the London Olympics? ‘Gangnam Style’ or the first ‘Hunger Games’ movie?” Thunberg asks her audience on Swedish radio station P1. “Those things all happened about seven or eight years ago. That’s the amount of time we’re talking about.

Her months-long journey from Sweden to America’s West Coast and back — by train, sailboat and an electric car loaned by Arnold Schwarzenegger — highlighted the impact that global warming is already having, from melting glaciers to fiercer forest fire seasons, Thunberg said.

FILE - In this Tuesday, May 28, 2019 file photo United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, from left, pose before the R20 Austrian world summit at Hofburg palace in Vienna, Austria. In a wide-ranging monologue on Swedish public radio, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg recounts how world leaders queued up to have their picture taken with her even as they shied away from acknowledging the grim scientific fact that time is running out to curb global warming. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak, file)

It also opened her eyes to economic and social disparities affecting in particular Indigenous, Black and minority communities, voices she has sought to amplify in the climate debate.

“The climate and sustainability crisis is not a fair crisis,” Thunberg says. “The ones who’ll be hit hardest from its consequences are often the ones who have done the least to cause the problem in the first place. "

Her frustration extends to journalists who want to know about “the real Greta” but interrupt her when she talks about the science of climate change.

“People want something simple and concrete, and they want me to be naive, angry, childish, and emotional,” Thunberg says. “That is the story that sells and creates the most clicks.”

Thunberg blasts governments and businesses that use what she calls “creative accounting” to makes their emissions look lower than they are and apply the word “green” to industries that are not.

“The emperors are naked. Every single one,” she says. “It turns out our whole society is just one big nudist party.”
Some critics have accused Thunberg of being a doom-monger. But she insists that her message is one of hope, not despair.

“There are signs of change, of awakening,” she says. “Just take the ‘Me Too’ movement, ‘Black Lives Matter’ or the school strike movement (for climate action) for instance,” she says, adding that the world has passed a “social tipping point” where it becomes impossible to look away.

FILE - In this Friday, Feb 21, 2020 file photo Climate avtivist Greta Thunberg, center, from Sweden lifts a poster as she takes part in a protest rally of the 'Fridays For Future' movement in Hamburg, Germany. In a wide-ranging monologue on Swedish public radio, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg recounts how world leaders queued up to have their picture taken with her even as they shied away from acknowledging the grim scientific fact that time is running out to curb global warming. (Christian Charisius/dpa via AP, file)

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic may provide a necessary wake-up call, she suggests.

The corona tragedy of course has no long term positive effects on the climate, apart from one thing only: namely the insight into how you should perceive and treat an emergency. Because during the corona crisis we suddenly act with necessary force.”

Russian nickel producer admits pollution in Arctic tundra

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In this handout frame taken from video released Sunday June 28, 2020, by Novaya Gazeta, showing what the report is water from a Norilsk Nickel enrichment plant gushing out of a pipe and into a river which also runs into the lake near Norilsk, 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. Russia's main criminal investigation body has launched a probe after a report that a nickel-processing plant was pumping water contaminated with heavy metals into the Arctic tundra. (Elena Kostyuchenko, Novaya Gazeta via AP)
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian metallurgical company said Sunday that it improperly pumped wastewater into the Arctic tundra and that it has suspended the responsible employees.

The statement from Nornickel is the second time in a month the company has been connected to pollution in the ecologically delicate region.

In May, around 21,000 tons of diesel fuel leaked after a reservoir at a Nornickel-operated power plant collapsed; some of the fuel entered a lake that feeds into an arm of the Arctic Sea.

The statement came hours after the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that water tainted with heavy metals from the tailings at a nickel-processing plant were being pumped into a river.

In this photo released Sunday June 28, 2020, by Novaya Gazeta, showing what the report is an excavator disassembling a pipe from a Norilsk Nickel enrichment plant with water gushing into a river which also runs into the lake near Norilsk, 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. Russia's main criminal investigation body has launched a probe after a report that a nickel-processing plant was pumping water contaminated with heavy metals into the Arctic tundra. (Elena Kostyuchenko, Novaya Gazeta via AP)

Nornickel said the water was improperly pumped because of an overflowing sump; it said the water was “clarified” and there is no threat of waste leakage.

Both facilities are near Norilsk, north of the Arctic Circle, 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) no
___

This story has been corrected to show that the name of the company is Nornickel, not Norilsk Nickel.

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Follow all AP stories about pollution and climate change at https://apnews.com/Climate

The Arctic is on fire: Siberian heat wave alarms scientists

By DARIA LITVINOVA and SETH BORENSTEIN June 24, 2020

1 of 6This photo taken on Friday, June 19, 2020 and provided by ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service shows the land surface temperature in the Siberia region of Russia. A record-breaking temperature of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) was registered in the Arctic town of Verkhoyansk on Saturday, June 20 in a prolonged heatwave that has alarmed scientists around the world. (ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service via AP)

MOSCOW (AP) — The Arctic is feverish and on fire — at least parts of it are. And that’s got scientists worried about what it means for the rest of the world.

The thermometer hit a likely record of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Russian Arctic town of Verkhoyansk on Saturday, a temperature that would be a fever for a person — but this is Siberia, known for being frozen. The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that it’s looking to verify the temperature reading, which would be unprecedented for the region north of the Arctic Circle.

“The Arctic is figuratively and literally on fire — it’s warming much faster than we thought it would in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and this warming is leading to a rapid meltdown and increase in wildfires,” University of Michigan environmental school dean Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist, said in an email.

“The record warming in Siberia is a warning sign of major proportions,” Overpeck wrote.
In this handout photo taken Tuesday, June 23, 2020 and provided by Olga Burtseva, a beach on the bank of Yana river is empty due to hot weather, during sunset outside Verkhoyansk, the Sakha Republic, about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. A record-breaking temperature of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) was registered in the Arctic town of Verkhoyansk on Saturday, June 20 in a prolonged heatwave that has alarmed scientists around the world. (Olga Burtseva via AP)

Much of Siberia had high temperatures this year that were beyond unseasonably warm. From January through May, the average temperature in north-central Siberia has been about 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, according to the climate science non-profit Berkeley Earth.

“That’s much, much warmer than it’s ever been over that region in that period of time,” Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said.

Siberia is in the Guinness Book of World Records for its extreme temperatures. It’s a place where the thermometer has swung 106 degrees Celsius (190 degrees Fahrenheit), from a low of minus 68 degrees Celsius (minus 90 Fahrenheit) to now 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit).

For residents of the Sakha Republic in the Russian Arctic, a heat wave is not necessarily a bad thing. Vasilisa Ivanova spent every day this week with her family swimming and sunbathing.

“We spend the entire day on the shore of the Lena River,” said Ivanova, who lives in the village of Zhigansk, 270 miles (430 kilometers) from where the heat record was set. “We’ve been coming every day since Monday.”

But for scientists, “alarm bells should be ringing,” Overpeck wrote.

Such prolonged Siberian warmth hasn’t been seen for thousands of years “and it is another sign that the Arctic amplifies global warming even more than we thought,” Overpeck said.

Russia’s Arctic regions are among the fastest warming areas in the world.
In this Thursday, June 18, 2020, handout photo provided by the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, workers prepare an area for reservoirs for soil contaminated with fuel at an oil spill outside Norilsk, 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to fully repair environmental damage from a massive fuel leak in the Arctic. A power plant in the Siberian city of Norilsk leaked 20,000 tons of diesel fuel into the ecologically fragile region when a storage tank collapsed on May 29. (Russian Emergency Situations Ministry via AP)

FILE - In this handout file photo dated Tuesday, June 2, 2020, provided by the Russian Marine Rescue Service, rescuers work to prevent the spread from an oil spill outside Norilsk, 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday June 19, 2020, has ordered his government to fully repair environmental damage from a massive fuel leak in the Arctic. A power plant in the Siberian city of Norilsk leaked 20,000 tons of diesel fuel into the ecologically fragile region when a storage tank collapsed on May 29. (Russian Marine Rescue Service via AP, File)

The temperature on Earth over the past few decades has been growing, on average, by 0.18 degrees Celsius (nearly one-third of a degree Fahrenheit) every 10 years. But in Russia it increases by 0.47 degrees Celsius (0.85 degrees Fahrenheit) — and in the Russian Arctic, by 0.69 degrees Celsius (1.24 degrees Fahrenheit) every decade, said Andrei Kiselyov, the lead scientist at the Moscow-based Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

“In that respect, we’re ahead of the whole planet,” Kiselyov said.

The increasing temperatures in Siberia have been linked to prolonged wildfires that grow more severe every year and the thawing of the permafrost — a huge problem because buildings and pipelines are built on them. Thawing permafrost also releases more heat-trapping gas and dries out the soil, which increases wildfires, said Vladimir Romanovsky, who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“In this case it’s even more serious, because the previous winter was unusually warm,” Romanovsky said. The permafrost thaws, ice melts, the soil subsides and then it can trigger a feedback loop that worsens permafrost thawing and “cold winters can’t stop it,” Romanovsky said.

A catastrophic oil spill from a collapsed storage tank last month near the Arctic city of Norilsk was partly blamed on melting permafrost. In 2011, part of a residential building in Yakutsk, the biggest city in the Sakha Republic, collapsed due to thawing and subsidence of the ground.

Last August, more than 4 million hectares of forests in Siberia were on fire, according to Greenpeace. This year the fires have already started raging much earlier than the usual start in July, said Vladimir Chuprov, director of the project department at Greenpeace Russia.

Persistently warm weather, especially if coupled with wildfires, causes permafrost to thaw faster, which in turn exacerbates global warming by releasing large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide, said Katey Walter Anthony, a University of Alaska Fairbanks expert on methane release from frozen Arctic soil.

“Methane escaping from permafrost thaw sites enters the atmosphere and circulates around the globe,” she said. “Methane that originates in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. It has global ramifications.”

And what happens in the Arctic can even warp the weather in the United States and Europe.

In the summer, the unusual warming lessens the temperature and pressure difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes where more people live, said Judah Cohen, a winter weather expert at Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston.

That seems to weaken and sometimes even stall the jet stream, meaning weather systems such as those bringing extreme heat or rain can stay parked over places for days on end, Cohen said.

According to meteorologists at the Russian weather agency Rosgidrome t, a combination of factors — such as a high pressure system with a clear sky and the sun being very high, extremely long daylight hours and short warm nights — have contributed to the Siberian temperature spike.

“The ground surface heats up intensively. .… The nights are very warm, the air doesn’t have time to cool and continues to heat up for several days,” said Marina Makarova, chief meteorologist at Rosgidromet.

Makarova added that the temperature in Verkhoyansk remained unusually high from Friday through Monday.

Scientists agree that the spike is indicative of a much bigger global warming trend.

“The key point is that the climate is changing and global temperatures are warming,” said Freja Vamborg, senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service in the U.K. “We will be breaking more and more records as we go.”

“What is clear is that the warming Arctic adds fuel to the warming of the whole planet,” said Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who is now at the University of Colorado.

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Borenstein reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jim Heintz in Moscow, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Roman Kutukov in Yakutsk, Russia, contributed to this report.

UN evaluates reports of record Arctic heat in Siberia

June 23, 2020
In this handout photo provided by Olga Burtseva, children play in the Krugloe lake outside Verkhoyansk, the Sakha Republic, about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia, Sunday, June 21, 2020. A Siberian town that endures the world's widest temperature range has recorded a new high amid a hear wave that is contributing to severe forest fires. Russia's meteorological service said the thermometer hit 38 Celsius (100.4 F) on Saturday in Verkhoyansk, in the Sakha Republic about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow. (Olga Burtseva via AP)
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. weather agency is investigating media reports suggesting a new record high temperature of over 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic Circle amid a heatwave and prolonged wildfires in eastern Siberia.

The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that it’s looking to verify the temperature reading on Saturday in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk with Rosgidromet, the Russian federal service for hydro-meteorological and environmental monitoring.

The reports suggest yet another possible sign of global warming in the Arctic, which the agency said is among the fastest warming regions in the world and is heating at twice the global average.

 this handout photo provided by Olga Burtseva, an outside thermometer shows 30 Celsius (86 F) around 11 p.m in Verkhoyansk, the Sakha Republic, about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia, Sunday, June 21, 2020. A Siberian town that endures the world's widest temperature range has recorded a new high amid a hear wave that is contributing to severe forest fires. Russia's meteorological service said the thermometer hit 38 Celsius (100.4 F) on Saturday in Verkhoyansk, in the Sakha Republic about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow. (Olga Burtseva via AP)



Apparently, this particularly region of eastern Siberia has very, very cold extremes in winter, but is also known for its extremes in summer, so temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius in July are not unusual,” World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman Clare Nullis said. “but obviously 38 degrees Celsius is exceptional.”

“We’ve seen satellite images this morning, and it’s just one mass of red -- it’s striking and worrying,” she told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

The area has been hit by wildfires that have driven up temperatures.

“A WMO fast-response evaluation team has given tentative acceptance of this observation as a legitimate observation, which is consistent with current upper air observations at the time in Siberia,” WMO special rapporteur Randall Cerveny said in a statement.

“This will now be subject to a normal process for a detailed formal review by a panel of WMO atmospheric scientists,” added Cerveny, who is also a professor of geographical sciences at Arizona State University.

The World Meteorological Organization has not previously verified possible records for the “highest temperature recorded north of the Arctic Circle,” but is considering creating such a category given the “interest in this extreme observation,” the agency said.

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Follow all AP coverage of climate change issues at https://apnews.com/Climate.

Panel: NOAA bowed to political pressure in Dorian dispute

By SETH BORENSTEIN June 16, 2020

\ In this Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump holds a chart as he talks with reporters after receiving a briefing on Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. A report from the National Academy of Public Administration released on Monday, June 15, 2020 says that NOAA’s acting chief Neil Jacobs and its then-communications director, Julie Kay Roberts, twice breached the agency’s rules designed to protect scientists and their work from political interference, putting out a press statement that “did not follow NOAA’s normal proves and appear to be the result of strong external pressure.” (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leaders violated the agency’s scientific integrity when they chastised a local weather office that had contradicted President Trump’s inaccurate comments about Hurricane Dorian, an outside panel found.

NOAA’s acting chief, Neil Jacobs, and its then-communications director, Julie Kay Roberts, twice breached the agency’s rules designed to protect scientists and their work from political interference, the National Academy of Public Administration concluded. Jacobs and Roberts released a statement that “did not follow NOAA’s normal process and appear to be the result of strong external pressure,” the group wrote in the 144-page report released late Monday.

NOAA’s science department had asked the public administration group to look into several complaints, including from its chief scientist and past administrator, after Hurricane Dorian threatened the East Coast in September.

As the storm approached the U.S., Trump tweeted that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” even though the National Hurricane Center had pretty much said Dorian would not hit Alabama. He later defended his statements with a crude Sharpie-drawn addition to a forecast map.

Twenty minutes after Trump’s tweet, meteorologists in the National Weather Service’s Birmingham office tweeted “Alabama will NOT see any impacts” from the storm.

After a phone call to Jacobs from his boss, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and other conversations with Commerce Department political appointees, NOAA put out the statement chastising the Birmingham weather office tweet. The statement said the Alabama office “spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”

Dorian made landfall in North Carolina and had no major impact on Alabama, which is about 600 miles away.

The outside report said the violations of scientific policy were, first, issuing the statement without talking to the Birmingham meteorologists and, second, issuing it after political pressure.

No one was disciplined, and Jacobs and Roberts disputed the findings. Roberts left NOAA for another high-ranking job in the Department of Commerce.

In a response letter, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, Craig McLean, criticized the lack of discipline against the two.

“While there may be found causes of sympathy for the oppressed and meek subordinates of domineering autocratic ogres, I hardly can find sympathy in this scintilla of an argument for clemency,” McLean wrote in a response letter. “If not the single highest person in NOAA, who will stand for the Scientific Integrity of the agency and the trust our public needs to invest in our scientific process and products? The NOAA Administrator? The NOAA Director of Communications?”

In this Thursday, May 28, 2020 file photo, Neil Jacobs, assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction, stands next to a chart during a briefing with President Donald Trump on the 2020 hurricane season in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. A report from the National Academy of Public Administration released on Monday, June 15, 2020 says that NOAA’s acting chief Jacobs and its then-communications director, Julie Kay Roberts, twice breached the agency’s rules designed to protect scientists and their work from political interference, putting out a press statement that “did not follow NOAA’s normal proves and appear to be the result of strong external pressure.” (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In a statement Tuesday, Jacobs called the report “an overly broad interpretation” and faulted it for creating “new standards for scientific misconduct.” He said NOAA’s unsigned statement in September “was not intended to imply Birmingham did anything wrong.”

Other investigations, including an inspector general report, are still pending.
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AP writer Meghan Hoyer contributed to this report.

Russia’s low virus death toll still raises questions in West

BABA'S SECRET 

VODKA, HONEY, GARLIC, 

BEET JUICE

SUNFLOWER SEEDS 

SHAKEN NOT STIRRED 

By DARIA LITVINOVA and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

June 14, 2020

1 of 8 https://apnews.com/aa848f2d7b9f83aea0a0e53bce0a82ea
FILE - In this May 15, 2020, file photo, gravediggers in protective suits carry the coffin of a COVID-19 victim as relatives and friends stand at a distance in the section of a cemetery reserved for coronavirus victims in Kolpino, outside St. Petersburg, Russia. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll is far below many other countries, even as it has reported at least 511,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)
MOSCOW (AP) — When Leonid Shlykov’s father, Sergei, died in a Moscow hospital last month after 11 days on a ventilator, the death certificate listed the coronavirus as an underlying condition but not the actual cause of death.

“Yes, he was suffering from impaired kidney function and diabetes, but if it hadn’t been for COVID-19, he would’ve been alive,” the son wrote on Facebook. “If we had known the real number of infections and deaths … it would have helped us make the decision to hospitalize (dad) earlier.”

The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll of 6,948 is far below many other countries, even as it has reported nearly 529,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil

The paradox also has led to allegations by critics and Western media that Russian authorities might have falsified the numbers for political purposes to play down the scale of the outbreak. Even a top World Health Organization official said the low number of deaths in Russia “certainly is unusual.”

Russian authorities have bristled at the suggestions.

“We have never manipulated the official statistics,” said Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova.

Finding the true numbers during the pandemic is difficult, since countries count cases and deaths in different ways and testing for the virus is uneven.

Still, several factors could contribute to Russia’s low virus mortality rate, including the way it counts deaths, a tendency among some officials to embellish statistics, its vast geography and the shorter life expectancy of its population.

An autopsy is mandatory in Russia in every confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19, with a determination on the cause of death made by a commission of specialists, said Dr. Natalia Belitchenko, a pathologist in the medical examiner’s office in the region around St. Petersburg.

She deals with coronavirus deaths almost daily, but said only about 20% of them have been attributed to COVID-19. In other cases, the virus was determined to be an underlying condition.

“In the vast majority of cases, the pneumonia itself wouldn’t have led to death, had the underlying conditions not flared up to a point of becoming fatal,” she told The Associated Press.

Unlike Russia, some countries’ official death count includes those who had COVID-19 but died from other causes, said Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program.

“It will be important that the Russian authorities review the way in which death certification is done to reassure themselves that they are accurately certifying deaths in the appropriate way,” he said.

This photo shows fresh graves at the Butovskoye cemetery, which serves as one of burial grounds for those who died of the coronavirus, in Moscow, Russia. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll is far below many other countries, even as it has reported at least 511,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

In this photo taken early Thursday, June 11, 2020, fresh graves have been dug at the Butovskoye cemetery, which serves as one of the burial grounds for those who died of the coronavirus, in Moscow, Russia. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll is far below many other countries, even as it has reported at least 511,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil.(AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

Death counts vary around the world because countries underreported the number of COVID-19 deaths early on, said Ali Mokdad, professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. They ascribed virus deaths to other causes due to insufficient testing or initially only counted deaths in hospitals, he added.

Some countries also are overcounting by including “presumptive deaths” — those who likely died of COVID-19 but were never tested for it, Mokdad said.

What sets Russia apart, however, is a habit of obscuring embarrassing truths, said Judy Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The way mortality data is recorded in Russia is affected by a Soviet-era tradition of setting future targets for improving public health through efforts to reduce mortality from certain reasons, such as alcoholism or tuberculosis.

Health officials “shift the way they code causes of death in order to try to meet those targets,” Twigg said.

Pathologists told AP there is pressure from hospital administrators to produce better-looking reports.

FILE - In this Friday, May 15, 2020, file photo, gravediggers in protective suits carry the coffin of a COVID-19 victim as relatives and friends stand at a distance in a cemetery reserved for coronavirus victims in Kolpino, outside St.Petersburg, Russia. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll is far below many other countries, even as it has reported at least 511,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)

FILE - In this May 26, 2020, file photo, grave diggers wearing protective suits carry a coffin of a COVID-19 victim for burial in the section of a cemetery reserved for coronavirus victims, outside Moscow, Russia. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll is far below many other countries, even as it has reported at least 511,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

FILE - In this May 15, 2020, file photo, cemetery workers in protective suits disinfect a grave as they bury a COVID-19 victim in a section of the Butovskoye cemetery reserved for coronavirus victims outside Moscow, Russia. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll is far below many other countries, even as it has reported at least 511,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil. (Kirill Zykov, Moscow News Agency photo via AP, File)


Requests and instructions to obscure certain causes of death in postmortems are “an inevitable part of our job,” said a pathologist in Siberia who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Data analysts say inconsistencies in Russia’s virus statistics suggest manipulation, such as regions reporting similar numbers of new cases for several days in a row, or the number of deaths in regional reports differing from those in federal reports.

“I don’t trust official statistics, and I believe I have reasons not to,” Boris Ovchinnikov, director of the Moscow-based Data Insight research agency, told the AP. “But we don’t have any good alternative indicators for assessing the real situation.”

Among the anomalies:

— The governor of the Lipetsk region in southwestern Russia was recorded telling subordinates last month that “numbers need to be changed, otherwise our region will be judged poorly.”

— In the Altai region in southern Siberia, a task force posted a daily infection update containing the words “for approval” addressed to the provincial governor. It quickly erased the words after it was reported on social media.

— Unusual spikes in pneumonia deaths indicate possibility more virus deaths than officially reported by mid-May: St. Petersburg reported 694 pneumonia deaths, with 63 from coronavirus; the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan reported 657 pneumonia deaths and 29 from coronavirus.

“Without doubt, there have been manipulations with statistics on the regional level,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, an independent analyst and former Kremlin political consultant, adding that it seems they did it “on their own initiative.”

At the same time, he noted that a decrease in cases was a key factor for holding two big events on the Kremlin agenda that were postponed by the virus: a massive Red Square parade for the 75th anniversary of the victory in World War II and a vote on constitutional amendments that could extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule until 2036.

Citing a slowdown in infections, Putin ordered the parade for June 24 and the vote for July 1. Most regions, including Moscow, also recently lifted tight lockdowns imposed in March even though daily numbers of new infections have remained high, hovering around 9,000.

In a bid to dispel claims of underreporting mortality, the government released updated statistics for April showing patients who died of other causes while testing positive for the virus, as well as those who tested negative but likely died of it.

If those were counted as coronavirus deaths, mortality would have been 60% higher than announced. Authorities insist they shouldn’t be included in the official toll, but even if all extra deaths recently reported by federal and Moscow officials were added, it would still be around 11,000.

Russian officials credit early quarantine measures and quick expansion of hospital capacity that prevented the health care system from being overwhelmed. They also cite more than 14 million tests that helped spot asymptomatic cases that account for more than 40% of all recent infections in the country of 146.7 million.

Officials noted that infections in Russia peaked later than in Europe, and deaths are now climbing more quickly.

Experts say Russia’s statistical gaps may result from its outdated system of collecting mortality data: In many regions, a death certificate must be delivered by a relative to a local civil registry office. Many of those offices were closed or had limited hours due to coronavirus lockdowns.

“So what we’re seeing now is insufficient data in many regions,” said Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer.

He said data from civil registries he studied showed that some regions reported fewer deaths in April than in previous years. Deaths were five times lower in the southern republic of Ingushetia, while in Krasnodar, they fell by about 1,500 from the monthly average, a record low.

“Some people just bury their relatives without going to the civil registration office,” Raksha said.

Researchers expect most of these gaps to be filled in next year, when the Russian State Statistics Service issues its annual report.

Raksha said Russia’s few virus deaths could also be due to less-frequent travel across the vast country, its low population density and lower social mobility. He also said because the country has a much lower life expectancy than the West, it has fewer elderly targets for the virus
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Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Temperature spike: Earth ties record high heat May reading

WE PUT OUR GARDEN IN TWO WEEKS EARLY

BY SETH BORENSTEIN June 12, 2020

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 27, 2020 file photo, a boy stands on the shore of the Ganges River during a hot summer day in Prayagraj, India. Earth's temperature spiked to tie a record high for May, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Friday, June 12, 2020. The global land temperature was the hottest for May on record. The heat was especially extreme in Siberia, Alaska, Asia, along the equator, the Southern Hemisphere and parts of the Northern Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Earth’s temperature spiked to tie a record high for May, U.S. meteorologists reported Friday.

Last month the global average temperature was 60.3 degrees (15.7 degrees Celsius), tying 2016 for the hottest May in 141 years of record keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That’s 1.7 degrees (nearly 1 degree Celsius) higher than the 20th century average for Earth.

Temperature on land set a heat record, while ocean temperatures ranked second.

Parts of Africa, Asia, western Europe, South and Central America had record warmth.

“We continue to warm on the long term and in any given month we’re likely to be knocking on the door, close to a record in the era that we’re in,” NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt said.

The last seven Mays, from 2014 to 2020, have been the seven warmest Mays on record.

This past spring was the second hottest on record, behind 2016. And this year so far is the second hottest five-month start of a year.

Pangolin released into wild under China’s new protections
By SAM McNEIL  June 12, 2020

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In this photo taken June 11, 2020, and released by CBCGDF, Sophia Zhang, a staffer from China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, or CBCGDF, collects oral and nasal secretion sample for testing from the Pangolin named Lijin at the Jinhua wild animal rescue center in eastern China's Zhejiang province. (CBCGDF via AP)

BEIJING (AP) — Activists in China have released a pangolin into the wild to celebrate new protections for the armadillo-like animal whose numbers in the country have dropped to near extinction levels.
Volunteers had rescued and rehabilitated the pangolin nicknamed Lijin after it was found by a fisherman in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.

“This is a good start … but this is not good enough,” said Zhou Jinfeng, secretary-general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Fund, the group behind the lone pangolin’s release on Thursday.

Just last year in Zhejiang, authorities arrested 18 smugglers and confiscated 23.1 tons of pangolin scales sourced from an estimated 50,000 creatures, according to Chinese state media.

After volunteers unlocked a transport crate, the foot-long pangolin crawled onto the lush forest floor outside Zhejiang’s Jinhua city. It’s brown scales and pink paws quickly disappeared in the emerald underbrush.

“We will release a lot more soon,” said Zhou, who has vowed to free all pangolins in captivity in China.

In this photo taken June 11, 2020, and released by CBCGDF, a worker from China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, or CBCGDF, holds the Pangolin named Lijin before its release from the Jinhua wild animal rescue center in eastern China's Zhejiang province. (CBCGDF via AP)

The U.S.-based group Save Pangolins said China’s granting of top-level protected status earlier this month was “a massive win for pangolins” after years of weak enforcement of existing restrictions. Pangolin scales are an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine and its meat is considered a delicacy by some.

Environmental groups say that poachers had regularly circumvented the original regulations to sell illegally hunted pangolin scales and meat, often sourced from Africa and Southeast Asia.

That has made pangolins “one of the most illegally traded mammals on the planet” with an estimated 1 million sold in the past 15 years, according to the Environmental Investigations Agency. Seizures have been recorded from Belgium to Singapore to Australia and the Philippines.

China’s increased protection forbids the raising of pangolins in captivity and the use of their scales in the nation’s mammoth traditional medicine industry.

Zhou said that efforts to halt the sale of pangolins in China were buoyed by a raise in global awareness of the wildlife animal trade linked to the outbreak of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In this photo taken June 11, 2020 and released by CBCGDF, Sophia Zhang, a staffer from China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation or CBCGDF, watch as the Pangolin named Lijin curls up for a rest at the Jinhua wild animal rescue center in eastern China's Zhejiang province. (CBCGDF via AP)

The June 5 order from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration did not explicitly mention the outbreak as a reason for the measure, but the timing appears to indicate it could be part of China’s nationwide crackdown on the wildlife trade following the pandemic.

Scientists say the coronavirus was most likely transmitted from bats to humans via an intermediary animal such as the pangolin.

Trade in wildlife including bats and pangolins has been linked to so-called zoonotic diseases that leap from animals to humans, and China quickly cracked down on the industry in a series of measures long-promoted by environmental groups.

Zhou said China’s native pangolins have been all but wiped out. Over the past five years, Zhou and volunteers found only five where hundreds of thousands lived just three decades ago.

Zhou said the new protections give groups like his the right to sue businesses and individuals selling pangolin scales. However, he wants to go a step further by releasing into the wild all captive pangolins in China and burning all confiscated pangolin scales, similar to how Kenya incinerated seized elephant tusks in a bid to end the illegal trade that continues to this day.

Ohio State University soil professor gets World Food Prize

By DAVID PITT June 11, 2020

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In this undated photo provided by the World Food Prize Foundation, Rattan Lal, a professor of soil science at The Ohio State University poses at the University in Columbus, Ohio. Lai was named the recipient of the 2020 World Food Prize on Thursday, June 11, 2020. He was recognized by the Des Moines, Iowa-based organization for his soil research which has led to improved food production and a better understanding of how atmospheric carbon can be held in the soil improving climate change.(World Food Prize Foundation via AP)


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A soil scientist whose research led to improved food production and a better understanding of how atmospheric carbon can be held in the soil to help combat climate change was named this year’s recipient of the World Food Prize on Thursday.

Rattan Lal is a professor of soil science at Ohio State University and founding director of the university’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center.

World Food Prize Foundation President Barbara Stinson announced Lal as the winner. The ceremony was held online rather than live in Washington because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

“Dr. Lal is a trailblazer in soil science with a prodigious passion for research that improves soil health, enhances agricultural production, improves the nutritional quality of food, restores the environment and mitigates climate change,” Stinson said.

Lal has developed and promoted the idea that healthy soil must not only have the usual nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but must have depleted carbon restored by leaving crop residue. This focus on soil’s physical properties diverged from the conventional soil fertility strategy in the 1970s, which relied heavily on replacing nutrients by applying fertilizer. 

Lal’s research in the 1990s revealed that restoring degraded soils through increasing soil carbon and organic matter not only improved soil health, but helped combat rising carbon dioxide levels in the air by sequestering atmospheric carbon. His analysis showed that soils can sequester carbon at rates as high as 2.6 gigatons per year.

His career has taken him to posts in Australia and Nigeria. He has led soil restoration projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America, integrating no-till farming and use of cover crops, mulching and agroforestry to protect soil, conserve water and return nutrients, carbon and organic matter in the soil.

Though the concepts have been around for 50 years, farmers in developing countries are beginning to understand and implement his suggested practices. Lal also seeks wider use of soil conservation measures focused on soil health in developed countries.

“In the U.S. soil conservation is practiced only on a very small percent of the total areas,” he said. “It’s catching up, but I wish it could be at a faster speed and more area going to that kind of concept.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a videotaped message that a growing world population creates a need to improve agriculture productivity to feed more people.

“He’s helping the Earth’s estimated 500 million small farmers be faithful stewards of their land through improved management, less soil degradation, and the recycling of nutrients. The billions of people who depend on these farms stand to benefit greatly from his work,” Pompeo said.

Lal, 76, was born in India and studied soils from his earliest days at Punjab Agricultural University. His pursuit of higher education led him to Ohio State University for a doctorate. He established the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center in 2000.

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In this undated photo provided by the World Food Prize Foundation, Rattan Lal, a professor of soil science at The Ohio State University poses at the University in Columbus, Ohio. Lai was named the recipient of the 2020 World Food Prize on Thursday, June 11, 2020. He was recognized by the Des Moines, Iowa-based organization for his soil research which has led to improved food production and a better understanding of how atmospheric carbon can be held in the soil improving climate change.(World Food Prize Foundation via AP)

Lal said he now is focused on nutrition-centered agriculture to help the world’s 850 million undernourished and 2 billion malnourished.

“We must eliminate hunger. We must also make sure that the food consumed is healthy and this is where the concept of healthy soil, plants, animals, people and the environment is a one and indivisible concept,” he said.

The World Food Prize was created by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug in 1986 to recognize scientists and others who have improved the quality and availability of food. The foundation that awards the $250,000 prize is based in Des Moines.