This is Gould plaza. This is New York University response to yesterday’s protests. I am old enough to remember when American intellectual and political leaders called for tearing down walls. Meanwhile, no word on next steps, town halls, or, you know, discourse. Just arrests and walls.

The USDA held back information and scrubbed crucial location information to protect dairy industry. Agriculture’s regulatory bubble is driving us straight into faster spread, mutations, and spillover risk of bird flu strains with pandemic potential.

The Food and Agriculture Organization misused my research to publish findings with a pro-meat bias ⚠️

The organization has been outdoing itself to distort the impacts of dietary change on the environment 🧵 theguardian.com/environment/20…

This is hugely important to watch.

The UN FAO has been misrepresenting the impact of dietary change on reducing greenhouse gas emissions — ignoring widely known scientific results.

The real question is why?

theguardian.com/environment/20…

Meat industry comms in a nutshell. A comms director for a livestock pharmaceutical company criticizes a scientist for challenging the FAO's citation of his own research by suggesting mis-citation is good science, then uses unattributed scare quotes, then tags the wrong guy.

Announcing The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness! It holds that all vertebrates and many invertebrates have a realistic chance of being conscious, and that their welfare merits consideration.

If you have relevant expertise, please sign!

nydeclaration.com

When a ranking of badass academics of this time is made, Paul Behrens will somewhere near the top. Kudos to Matthew Hayek as well. This took ⚽️🏀. Well done.
Also, absolute shame on Food and Agriculture Organization for becoming a meat industry disinformation outlet. boooooo.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

FAO really outdoing itself in tarnishing its reputation, not just by writing poorly thought-out reports, but now by explicitly misrepresenting researchers, who 'accuse the FAO study of systematic errors, poor framing, and highly inappropriate use of source data.'

.Paul Behrens and Matthew Hayek argue FAO “seriously distorted” their work in a flagship UN report, underestimating the climate potential of shifts to more plant-based diets.

Reducing meat consumption is key to combat climate change.
✍️Arthur Neslen
theguardian.com/environment/20…

Companies are chasing public 💸 not climate solutions. Given the ridiculous way 45Q subsidies work, this was always the intent. It's now out in the open b/c Summit thinks this is how to 'sell' the project in North Dakota. A complete waste of IRA money.

HT Matthew Hayek

In the race for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration, it's possible we'll more bait-and-switches to Bioenergy with Enhanced Oil Recovery. Someone should really do an economic analysis on how likely it is that more of this will happen.