A flagship UN report on livestock emissions is facing calls for retraction from two key experts it cited who say that the paper “seriously distorted” their work.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) misused their research to underestimate the potential of reduced meat intake to cut agricultural emissions, according to a letter sent to the FAO by the two academics, which the Guardian has seen.

Paul Behrens, an associate professor at Leiden University and Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor at New York University, both accuse the FAO study of systematic errors, poor framing, and highly inappropriate use of source data.

Hayek told the Guardian: “The FAO’s errors were multiple, egregious, conceptual and all had the consequence of reducing the emissions mitigation possibilities from dietary change far below what they should be. None of the mistakes had the opposite effect.”

Agriculture accounts for 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which are attributable to livestock in the form of methane from burps and manure, and deforestation for grazing and feed crops. As global meat production leapt by 39% in the first two decades of this century, agricultural emissions also rose by 14%.

At the Cop28 climate summit in December, the FAO published the third in a series of studies of the livestock emissions problem. As well as reducing the FAO’s estimate of livestock’s contribution to overall global heating for a third consecutive time, it used a paper written by Behrens and others in 2017 to argue that shifts away from meat eating could only reduce global agri-food emissions by between 2 and 5%.

Behrens’s paper from 2017 assessed the environmental impacts of government-backed nationally recommended diets (NRDs) of the time, which have since become outdated. Many countries, such as China and Denmark, have drastically reduced their recommended meat intake since then, while Germany now proposes a 75% plant-based diet in its NRD.

Behrens says “voluminous evidence” from larger environmental reports which recommended reductions in meat content, such as the Eat-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, were ignored, according to the letter.

“The scientific consensus at the moment is that dietary shifts are the biggest leverage we have to reduce emissions and other damage caused by our food system,” Behrens told the Guardian. “But the FAO chose the roughest and most inappropriate approach to their estimates and framed it in a way that was very useful for interest groups seeking to show that plant-based diets have a small mitigation potential compared to alternatives.”

Of more than 200 climate scientists surveyed by Behrens and Hayek for a recent paper, 78% said it was important for livestock herd sizes to peak by 2025 if the world was to stand a chance of preventing dangerous global heating.

As well as using obsolete NRDs, the scientists say the FAO report “systematically underestimates” the emissions-cutting potential of dietary shifts through what the letter calls a “series of methodological errors”.

The authors say these include: double-counting meat emissions until 2050, mixing different baseline years in analyses, and channelling data inputs that inappropriately favour diets allowing increased global meat consumption. The FAO paper also skips over the opportunity cost of carbon sequestration on non-farmed land.

Hayek said the FAO inappropriately cited a report he co-authored that measured all agri-food emissions, and applied it to livestock emissions alone. “It wasn’t just like comparing apples to oranges,” he said. “It was like comparing really small apples to really big oranges.”

Correspondingly, the mitigation potential from farming less livestock was underestimated by a factor of between 6 and 40, he said.

The FAO is the world’s primary source for agricultural data, and its reports are routinely used by authoritative bodies such as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But the FAO is also mandated to increase livestock productivity so as to bolster nutrition and food security, arguably creating a conflict of interests.

Former officials have accused the FAO of censoring and sabotaging their work when it challenged livestock industry positions. A recent FAO roadmap to making the sector sustainable also omitted the option of reducing meat intake from a list of 120 policy interventions.

That paper received praise from meat industry lobbyists, one of whom called it “music to our ears” when it was released at Cop28.

An FAO spokesperson said: “As a knowledge-based organisation, FAO is fully committed to ensuring accuracy and integrity in scientific publications, especially given the significant implications for policymaking and public understanding.

“We would like to assure you that the report in question has undergone a rigorous review process with both an internal and external double-blind peer review to ensure that the research meets the highest standards of quality and accuracy, and that potential biases are minimised. FAO will look into the issues raised by the academics and undertake a technical exchange of views with them.”

The sound of an earthworm is a distinctive rasping and scrunching. Ants sound like the soothing patter of rain. A passing, tunnelling vole makes a noise like a squeaky dog’s toy repeatedly being chewed.

On a spring day at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution in Hertfordshire, singing skylarks and the M1 motorway are competing for the airways. But the attention here is on the soundscapes underfoot: a rich ecosystem with its own alien sounds. More than half of the planet’s species live in the soil, and we are just starting to tune into what they are up to. Beetle larvae, millipedes, centipedes and woodlice have other sound signatures, and scientists are trying to decipher which sounds come from which creatures.

In a field divided up into test strips, Carlos Abrahams pushes a sensor the length of a knitting needle into the soil. With a pair of headphones on, he listens to the “poor man’s rainforest”: a dark landscape of miniature caves, tunnels and decomposing matter stewing away under our feet.

“A few ticks and clicks going on,” says Abrahams, an ecoacoustics specialist from Baker Consultants, as he listens in.

Abrahams and scientists from the University of Warwick are building up libraries of subterranean sounds. The soil makes different noises depending on the season and whether it’s night or day. Even in the afternoon when the soil has warmed up, sounds get richer, research suggests.

“The soil is such a mystery,” says Dr Jacqueline Stroud, from the University of Warwick’s Crop Centre. “This is like opening the door and seeing what is going on below ground. It’s a different way of exploring the world.”

Until recently, soil had been a relative blank spot for monitoring species abundance. Farmers and gardeners hoping to find out how healthy their soils were had to dig up spadefuls and carry out laborious tests.

Last year, a study found soil was the single most species-rich habitat on Earth, with more than half of all species living in it. But only a fraction have been identified, and most are too small to see. Soundscapes are becoming an increasingly popular way of monitoring wildlife abundance, above ground, beneath the earth and underwater.

Noisy soil is generally healthier because it contains a greater range of bugs and worms busying around. Soil organisms alter and improve the structure of soil by passing nutrients between one another and creating an environment that is well ventilated and diverse. These webs provide food, fibre and clean water for people – topsoil is where 95% of the planet’s food is grown.

Soils that have little biodiversity are more fragile: they have lost the structure and connections that keep particles together. This means they are more likely to be washed away by floods or blown away by strong winds. An estimated 24bn tonnes of fertile soil is lost every year through intensive farming, according to a UN-backed study, the Global Land Outlook.

Farmers have repeatedly asked for more efficient ways of measuring the abundance of earthworms, which are a good indicator of the heath of soils, according to researchers.

Baker Consultants and the University of Warwick have funding for a two-year research project developing a recording unit prototype. The aim is to record soil sounds at “big data” scales.

On the land Abrahams is testing, scientists are trialling more ecological ways of farming, including crop rotations with legumes and higher proportions of oats. In total there are 70 scientists working on this bit of land, marked out in 66 plots of 24m by 24m, finding out new things about soil structure, viruses, microbes and fungi – making it among the most studied soil in the world. “It’s a unique outdoor laboratory,” says Kim Hammond-Kosack from Rothamsted Research, who set up the experiments.

Abrahams and Stroud’s teams started their sampling at Rothamsted in October last year. Each month they take two recordings on each of the plots, measuring how activity above the ground affects what is happening in the soil.

Dr Simon Butler from the University of East Anglia has been listening to the soil before and after the application of zebra dung in Eswatini (previously known as Swaziland). The soil fizzed with activity post-application. “I’ve never really considered the sound of soils, so it was fascinating to hear how the acoustic properties change in response to the presence of fresh dung,” he says.

The sounds being produced are within the lower range of human hearing, so it’s possible there are sounds in the soil we haven’t heard yet. Early research from Switzerland shows soils were producing the most complex sounds in spring and summer, which declined in autumn and winter. Abrahams’ previous research has shown that soils in restored forests in the UK seem to have a greater diversity of sounds than soil from deforested plots. He says: “As a general rule, the more diverse it is above ground, the more that is going on in the soil.”

In January, researchers published what they believe is the first paper listening to tropical forest soils, which are among the most biodiverse habitats in the world. Like others, they documented multiple mysterious sounds. The next task is to create a library of soil sounds so they can work out what they’re actually listening to.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

Good news for lazy gardeners: one labour-saving tweak could almost double the number of butterflies in your garden, according to a new scientific study – let the grass grow long.

In recent years nature lovers have been extolling the benefits of relaxed lawn maintenance with the growing popularity of the #NoMowMay campaign. Now an analysis of six years of butterfly sightings across 600 British gardens has provided the first scientific evidence that wilder lawns boost butterfly numbers.

The benefits of leaving areas of grass long were most pronounced in gardens within intensively farmed landscapes, with up to 93% more butterflies found and a greater range of species. Gardens with long grass in urban areas showed an 18% boost to butterfly abundance.

“We wanted to be able to give tried and tested gardening advice that will benefit butterflies, as we know lots of people want to help,” said Dr Richard Fox, the head of science at Butterfly Conservation and a co-author of the study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. “This study proves, for the first time, that allowing a patch of grass to grow long will attract more butterflies into your garden.”

The study found that another butterfly bonus for gardens was flowering ivy, which can flourish on walls in urban backyards. This increased the numbers of the holly blue – the caterpillars feed on ivy and holly – and the red admiral and comma, which benefit from its flowers as a crucial nectar source in autumn.

According to the study, long grass in gardens attracts more butterfly species whose caterpillars feed on grasses. These include meadow browns, gatekeepers, speckled woods, ringlets and small skippers. Fox said this suggested the boost in population was not simply because long grass provided more nectar from wildflowers within it, such as dandelions or knapweed, but because butterflies were seeking or actually breeding in rewilded lawns.

“It’s a really positive sign,” said Fox. “What people are doing with long grass in gardens is creating potential or actual breeding habitat. In order to make an impact on the biodiversity crisis we need to be creating places where butterflies and other wildlife can breed. This is simple, doesn’t cost anything and saves you time and effort.

“If you have a patch of long grass you may have grasshoppers, beetles and ant hills as well – there will be all these spinoffs.”

Private outdoor space makes up 7,280 sq km of land across Britain – an area larger than the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire combined – and an estimated 62% of this is vegetated gardens, and so potentially vital wildlife habitat.

According to Butterfly Conservation, the benefits of long grass to butterflies and other invertebrates is likely to be found in other grassy public spaces too, such as parks, school grounds, allotments and road verges. Through its Wild Spaces programme, the charity aims to transform 100,000 areas across the UK to help support butterfly populations.

Fox said the principle of managing long grass for butterflies was the same as wildlife-friendly meadow management: don’t do everything all at once.

To provide good habitat for butterfly caterpillars, long grass has to be left until late September or October before being cut lightly, and some species such as small skippers require long grass all year round.

“If you take part in #NoMowMay our message is, don’t just mow your grass in June,” said Fox.

Representatives for Kanye West have alleged that a man physically and sexually assaulted his wife Bianca Censori in an incident in Los Angeles.

Sources previously told TMZ that West was being investigated as a suspect in a battery incident earlier this week, after the rapper was alleged to have struck a man who had grabbed Censori.

The rapper’s team have subsequently released a statement, saying: “‘Grabbed’ is grossly inadequate as a description of what happened. Bianca was physically assaulted. The assailant didn’t merely collide into her. He put his hands under her dress, directly on her body, he grabbed her waist, he spun her around, and then he blew her kisses. She was battered and sexually assaulted.”

The Guardian has contacted the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for further information.

It follows an incident in 2022 when West was investigated by the LAPD for battery of a person he claimed was taunting him. “He just had this real attitude, like, ‘Whatchu gonna do?’”, said West, who was not arrested or charged over the incident. “Imma just tell you, that blue Covid mask ain’t stop that knockout.”

West, who has changed his name to Ye, reportedly married Censori, an architect at his company Yeezy, in December 2022, less than a month after his divorce from Kim Kardashian was finalised.

That year West lost a series of brand partnership deals with Adidas and others in the wake of a series of antisemitic comments, including that Jewish people “tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda”. But he has enjoyed a career renaissance this year following the release of his album Vultures, a collaboration with vocalist Ty Dolla $ign which topped the US chart and produced the global hit Carnival, which also went to No 1 in the US.

In December 2023, West apologised for the antisemitic remarks, writing in Hebrew on social media: “I deeply regret any pain I may have caused … I am committed to making amends and promoting unity.”

Climate campaigners have accused Scottish ministers of being “inept” and “short-termist” after they scrapped Scotland’s target to cut carbon emissions by 75% by 2030.

Màiri McAllan, the Scottish net zero secretary, confirmed her government had abandoned that target and would also drop legally binding annual targets on reducing carbon emissions, after damning criticism from a UK advisory committee.

In what opposition politicians labelled a “humiliating” climbdown, McAllan said Scotland would instead follow the lead of the UK and Welsh governments by adopting five-yearly “carbon budgets” aimed at meeting its zero emissions target date of 2045.

McAllan told MSPs this decision had been heavily influenced by the UK Climate Change Committee, which said last month the 2030 target was “no longer credible” because of inadequate action on home heating, transport, farming and nature restoration by Scottish ministers.

She said the 2030 target had always been stretching, and claimed the new approach was simply a pragmatic response, acknowledging the huge scale of the task that involved “minor legislative amendments”.

But Prof Piers Forster, the CCC’s interim chair, said scrapping the 2030 target was “deeply disappointing” as it undermined effective climate action. He urged McAllan to set out the new commitments as soon as possible.

“Interim targets and plans to deliver against them are what makes any net zero commitment credible,” he said. “They are essential for enabling a stable transition. Long-term planning is vital for businesses, citizens and future parliaments. Today that has been undermined.”

Friends of the Earth Scotland, previously a supporter of Scotland’s efforts to be a “world leader” on climate action, said this reversal was “the worst environmental decision in the history of the Scottish parliament”.

Imogen Dow, its head of campaigns, said: “Instead of using the past decade to deliver warm homes, reliable public transport and a fair transition away from fossil fuels, inept, short-termist politicians have kept millions of people trapped in the broken status quo that only benefits big polluters.”

Jamie Livingstone, the head of Oxfam Scotland, said the decision was a “reprehensible retreat caused by [the Scottish government’s] recklessly inadequate level of action to date. With scientists linking deadly heatwaves in west Africa to climate change and Dubai drowning in a deluge of rain, the urgency of climate action couldn’t be clearer.”

The rollback is doubly difficult for Scottish ministers because Nicola Sturgeon, the previous first minister, had made the climate crisis one of her government’s top priorities. She was the first UK leader to acknowledge the planet faced a climate emergency.

Sturgeon signed a power-sharing deal with the Scottish Green party in 2021 which prioritised climate action, and then posed with Greta Thunberg at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow later that year.

Graham Simpson, a Scottish Conservative MSP, said it was a surprise that Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, the Scottish Green co-leaders who signed that agreement, had not resigned their ministerial posts in embarrassment. Harvie said the Greens were still driving change.

The Scottish government now has to table urgent legislation to scrap Holyrood’s current climate act, which sets annual targets, and instead use carbon budgets. Those five-yearly budgets set a ceiling for how much CO₂ can be emitted in those time periods.

McAllan said the Scottish government would quadruple the number of electric vehicle chargers, “explore” a new integrated public transport ticket system, pilot emissions reduction schemes on livestock farms, consult on a new carbon tax for large rural estates, and use rates relief to subsidise green energy for businesses.

Livingstone said these “largely recycled measures represent baby steps forward rather than the giant leaps needed and are a thinly veiled distraction from ministers’ failure to deliver their existing climate commitments”.

After reviewing the results of thousands of tests on fruits and vegetables, Consumer Reports has found unhealthy levels of pesticides in about 20% of US produce.

This chart, in alphabetical order, shows the risk from pesticides in conventional and organic produce, as well as whether the fruits and vegetables are domestically grown or imported. Consumer Reports “recommends those rated as very low, low or moderate risk. When possible, replace a food rated high or very high with a lower-risk one, or choose organic. Keep in mind that the risk comes from repeated servings over time.”

Risks are calculated for the amount a 35-pound – or four-year-old-child – can safely consume each day.

Read more from this pesticide investigation:

• Can you wash pesticides off your food? A guide to eating fewer toxic chemicals

• Kale, watermelon and even some organic foods pose high pesticide risk, analysis finds

• Blueberries and bell peppers: six fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide risk

• What’s safe to eat? Here is the pesticide risk level for each fruit and vegetable

Fossil vertebrae unearthed in a mine in western India are the remains of one of the largest snakes that ever lived, a monster estimated at up to 15 metres in length – longer than a T rex.

Scientists have recovered 27 vertebrae from the snake, including a few still in the same position as they would have been when the reptile was alive. They said the snake, which they named Vasuki indicus, would have looked like a large python and would not have been venomous.

The lignite mine where the fossil was found is located in Panandhro, in the western state of Gujarat.

“Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction like anacondas and pythons. This snake lived in a marshy swamp near the coast at a time when global temperatures were higher than today,” said Debajit Datta, a postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and the lead author of the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday.

Because of the incomplete nature of the Vasuki remains, the researchers gave an estimated length range of 11-15 metres and 1 tonne in weight.

Vasuki, named after the snake king associated with the Hindu deity Shiva, rivals in size another huge prehistoric snake called Titanoboa, whose fossils were discovered in a coalmine in northern Colombia in 2009. Titanoboa, estimated at 13 metres long and more than 1 tonne, lived between 58m and 60m years ago. The largest living snake today is Asia’s reticulated python at 10 metres.

“The estimated body length of Vasuki is comparable to that of Titanoboa, although the vertebrae of Titanoboa are slightly larger than those of Vasuki. However, at this point, we cannot say if Vasuki was more massive or slender compared to Titanoboa,” said Sunil Bajpai, a palaeontologist, professor at Roorkee and the study’s co-author.

These huge snakes lived during the Cenozoic era, which began after the dinosaur age ended 66m years ago.

The biggest Vasuki vertebra was about 11cm (4in) wide. Vasuki appears to have had a broad, cylindrical body perhaps around 44cm wide. The skull was not found.

“Vasuki was a majestic animal,” Datta said. “It may well have been a gentle giant, resting its head on a high porch formed by coiling its massive body for most parts of the day or moving sluggishly through the swamp like an endless train.”

The researchers are unsure what prey Vasuki ate, but considering its size it could have included crocodilians. Other fossils found in the area included crocodilians and turtles, as well as fish and two primitive whales, Kutchicetus and Andrewsiphius.

Vasuki was a member of the madtsoiidae snake family that appeared roughly 90m years ago but went extinct about 12,000 years ago. These snakes spread from India through southern Eurasia and into north Africa after the Indian subcontinent collided with Eurasia about 50m years ago, Bajpai said.

This was a dominant snake family during the dinosaur age’s late stages and into the early Cenozoic before its diversity dropped, he added.

“Snakes are amazing creatures that often leave us stunned because of their size, agility and deadliness,” Datta said. “People are scared of them as some snakes are venomous and have a fatal bite. But snakes perhaps attack people out of fear rather than with an intent to attack. I believe snakes, like most animals, are peaceful creatures, and an important component of our ecosystem.”

Two more black-footed ferrets have been successfully cloned in an attempt to save the endangered species, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced.

The national agency shared news about the births of ferrets Noreen and Antonia, who were both born last May.

Both ferrets were cloned using tissue samples collected in 1988 from a female ferret named Willa. The 2020 birth of a black-footed ferret – using the same genetic material that produced Noreen and Antonia – signified the first cloning of a native endangered species, the USFWS reported.

The cloning of black-footed ferret represents a significant milestone in the continued fight to save the gravely endangered species.

The black-footed ferret – known for the black markings on its tail, feet and eyes – has been categorized as endangered since the 1960s, according to the USFWS.

Agricultural expansion, the prairie dog and other factors led to a sharp decline in the ferret’s population, which was anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million in the 1800s.

The species was presumed extinct in 1979, when the last black-footed ferret died in captivity. But a small population of ferrets was discovered in 1981 by a Wyoming cattle rancher.

Conservationists quickly captured the wild ferrets and launched the Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Program, breeding the rare mammal in captivity to increase its population.

Willa was among of the few ferrets who were initially captured. Unfortunately, the female ferret did not have any living descendants. But scientists collected her genes and tissue samples – freezing the precious cells at the Frozen Zoo in San Diego, California.

The cryobank hosts more than 10,000 “living cell cultures, oocytes, sperm, and embryos” from nearly 1,000 species, according to the zoo’s website.

Elizabeth Ann, a female ferret born in 2020, was the first clone using Willa’s genes. But Elizabeth Ann, who lives at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in northern Colorado, also did not have descendants. Handlers working with Elizabeth Ann said the female ferret was not interested in any potential mates.

“She didn’t like the males, and she didn’t even let them into her tunnel,” Ben Novak, lead scientist with the conservation non-profit Revive & Restore, said to the Washington Post. “She bit one of them on the nose.”

Scientists are also unable to breed Elizabeth Ann due to an issue with her reproductive organs not caused by her initial cloning, CBS News reported.

Therefore, the latest ferrets were cloned after scientists inseminated a domestic ferret, the Post reported.

Noreen was born and also resides at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center. Antonia lives at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia.

The national agency confirmed that Noreen and Antonia are both “healthy and continue to reach expected developmental and behavioral milestones”.

Both ferrets will be used for breeding when they reach reproductive age.

To avoid pesticides, consider buying the fruits and vegetables that pose the least risk in a new analysis by Consumer Reports, and buying organic for those that pose the most. Below are answers to common questions about what other steps you can take.

Read more from this pesticide investigation:

Find out more about pesticides at Consumer Reports