Climate disinformation can push carbon taxes off a cliff model shows

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

image: 

Climate and policy outcomes under disinformation scenarios, comparing peak temperature, final atmospheric CO₂, early carbon taxation, and average abatement under a politically constrained planner and majority voting across benchmark, early, late, persistent, and intervention scenarios.

view more 

Credit: Katsiaryna Bahamazava and Stanley Reznik

Carbon pricing is widely regarded as a cornerstone of climate policy, yet real-world carbon prices remain far below the levels recommended by benchmark climate models. One reason may lie not in the physics or economics of climate change, but in what people believe about it. Most climate-economy models assume that citizens hold correct beliefs about climate damages. In practice, climate disinformation can distort those beliefs and weaken support for mitigation.

In a study published in the KeAi journal Risk Sciences, researchers from University College Dublin and the ILaVita Foundation developed a dynamic climate-economy model in which the population is divided into two groups: "informed" agents, who understand the true extent of climate damage, and "misinformed" agents, who systematically understate it. The share of informed agents shifts over time through learning, disinformation shocks, and feedback from visible climate harm.

The team compared two ways of setting a carbon tax. In the first, a politically constrained planner understands the true damages but faces implementation costs whenever policy exceeds what public opinion will support. In the second, policy is decided by majority voting and adjusts gradually, reflecting how slowly real tax systems change.

"Contrary to the common view that insulated planners are always better suited for long-horizon climate policy, majority voting can initially generate stronger carbon taxation than a politically constrained planner," explains corresponding author Katsiaryna Bahamazava of University College Dublin. “As long as informed voters remain the majority, the median voter backs the ambitious policy, producing stronger early mitigation and lower peak warming.”

That "democratic advantage", however, proved fragile. Once disinformation erodes the informed majority, the political target for carbon taxation shifts sharply, producing what the authors describe as a cliff-edge dynamic in which implemented policy declines rapidly. The planner, by contrast, weakens more smoothly as public support fades.

Notably, timing matters too. Disinformation arriving late or persisting over time was especially damaging because it undermines support after the transition to stronger climate policy has begun, generating "hothouse" warming trajectories under both regimes. Encouragingly, a sufficiently strong counter-disinformation intervention almost completely offset an early disinformation shock, returning outcomes close to the no-disinformation benchmark.

"Protecting the information environment is not merely a matter of public discourse or democratic quality; it is a macroeconomic component of effective climate policy," says co-author Stanley Reznikof the ILaVita Foundation. "Information policy is not just complementary to carbon pricing; it helps sustain the political conditions under which carbon pricing remains feasible."

###

Contact the author: Katsiaryna Bahamazava, School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Email: Katsiaryna.Bahamazava@ul.ie

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 300 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

---

Journal

Risk Sciences

DOI

10.1016/j.risk.2026.100063

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Climate disinformation, belief distortions, and the timing of carbon taxes: A policy analysis.

COI Statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

 

Only 9% of major companies use biodiversity indicators, study finds

Lund University

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

Biodiversity indicators can help companies make more sustainable decisions. But only nine per cent of the world’s largest companies in sectors with a major impact on biodiversity use such indicators, according to a new study from Lund University. The researchers also show that different indicators can lead to different conclusions and present seven recommendations for how they should be used.

Researchers from Lund University reviewed sustainability reports from 89 of the world’s largest companies operating in the sectors with the greatest impact on biodiversity: food, beverages, tobacco, apparel, chemicals, construction, energy and mining. Eight of the companies reported using biodiversity indicators to inform their decisions. However, only two of the eight reported using more than one indicator, something the researchers can now show is of great importance.

“Different indicators measure different aspects of nature. Our results show that no single biodiversity indicator provides a complete picture. Companies that rely on only one indicator may therefore make decisions that protect one biodiversity value while damaging another,” says William Sidemo Holm, one of the researchers behind the study.

In the new study, the researchers conducted analyses comparing four different indicators. The results show that the indicators often differ in their assessments of how important a geographical area is for biodiversity. A company that uses only one indicator risks concluding that an area is of little importance for biodiversity, even though it may be highly valuable from perspectives that the particular indicator does not capture.

“If companies want to understand and report their impact on biodiversity accurately, they need to use several indicators rather than a single measure. Indicators can play a crucial role in informing decisions that affect biodiversity, but there is still considerable room for improvement in how they are used today,” says William Sidemo Holm.
 

The researchers’ recommendations for future development and application of biodiversity indicators:

1. Use multiple biodiversity indicators to capture different aspects of biodiversity and avoid overlooking important values.
2. Use more than one indicator per biodiversity aspect when possible, reducing bias from specific datasets or methods.
3. Use composite indicators cautiously, mainly as an initial screening tool; rely on individual indicators for important decisions.
4. Assess biodiversity at the ecoregion level, not only globally, to recognise important biodiversity in less species-rich ecosystems.
5. Develop new indicators for underrepresented biodiversity dimensions, such as genetic diversity and ecological connectivity.
6. Improve taxonomic coverage, especially for plants, fungi and invertebrates, which are currently underrepresented.
7. Combine biodiversity indicators with assessments of future human pressures, such as projected land-use change, to better inform business decisions.

---

Journal

Journal of Cleaner Production

DOI

10.1016/j.jclepro.2026.149032

Article Title

Biodiversity at risk when businesses rely on narrow indicators

 

The atmospheric pattern that has shaped Greenland’s climate for thousands of years

Sediments from southern Greenland reveal a persistent link between the North Atlantic Oscillation, precipitation and regional ice-sheet behaviour

MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

image: 

The Northern lights (aurora borealis) shines down of the deck of the research vessel MARIA S. MERIAN during expedition MSM111 as it sails towards Greenland, where the sediment core from Narsaq Sound was recovered. Photo: MARUM, University of Bremen; J. Faust

view more 

Credit: MARUM, University of Bremen; J. Faust

In high-latitude coastal areas specifically, Arctic Amplification means that temperatures are rising quicker than the global mean. This combination of rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO; see info box) has huge impacts on regions with a ‘cryosphere’ – areas that host ice sheets and glaciers, such as southern Greenland. Present day measurements demonstrate a clear relationship between the positive NAO phases, increasing precipitation and cooler temperatures in southern Greenland. Beyond the time measurements began however, the impact of the large- scale atmospheric circulation patterns on the Greenland Ice Sheet is poorly understood.

The aim of a new study led by MARUM scientists, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, was to create such a precipitation record extending back through the Holocene; our planet’s current warm epoch that spans the last ca. 12,000 years. The international research team used a sediment core collected in 2022 from Narsaq Sound, in south western Greenland. The core was collected during the research expedition MSM 111 BAFFDEEP, funded by the MARUM Cluster of Excellence “The Ocean Floor – Earth’s Uncharted Interface”.

Measuring rainfall or snowfall over millennia in marine mud may sound challenging, but the researchers found the clue to this by looking at the distinct geology surrounding Narsaq Sound. The rocks that surround Narsaq Sound are unique in that they are rich in Niobium, a rare Earth element. Niobium concentrations are generally low in the ocean and the element remains stable in the environment. Using X-ray fluorescence scanning (XRF), the researchers searched for changes in Niobium concentrations in the sediments as a fingerprint, or tracer, of past precipitation. Elevated Niobium concentrations found in the core sediments result from increased transport of Niobium-bearing sediment to the fjord by local glaciers or by the river draining the surrounding region. This is the first time Niobium sources, usually commercially exploited for steel and electronics industries, have been used as a tracer for past precipitation.

A clear climate-driven pattern in Niobium concentrations was found throughout the Narsaq Sound sediment record. Concentrations were high following retreat of the Greenland Ice Sheet in the early Holocene (around 11,600 years ago). After comparing the Narsaq Sound record with other records containing a signal of the NAO, the authors found the only explanation for this was that over south western Greenland, precipitation was higher but temperatures lower when the NAO was in a positive phase. “What surprised us most,” says lead author Dr. Johan Faust, “was the persistence of the signal: we can trace the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on southern Greenland’s hydroclimate over the thousands of years.”

If this relationship holds in the future this has important implications for the future dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Some models predict more consistently NAO positive phases under a warming climate. This may increase precipitation in southwestern Greenland, potentially promoting growth of local glaciers despite ongoing climate warming

---

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-77084-0

Article Title

Persistent influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on Late Holocene hydroclimate in southwestern Greenland

 

‘Move away’ and ‘stop that!’: Wild elephants use a rich gestural repertoire intentionally to “mean business”

Elephants check whether others are paying attention, wait for a response and persist with further gestures when their apparent goal is not met

University of Portsmouth

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

image: 

 The male elephant on the right performs an Ear Flap to the other male on the left. 

view more 

Credit: Credit: Vesta Eleuteri

The study, published in Animal Cognition, is the first systematic investigation of intentional gestural communication in wild African savannah elephants. Researchers observed elephants in competitive contexts in Addo Elephant National Park and Marakele National Park in South Africa, carrying out more than 90 hours of observation and recording around 840 individual gesture instances.

The researchers found that elephants were gesturing intentionally in a recipient-directed and goal-directed way. They visually checked whether another elephant was attending to them before and during gesturing, adapted their gesture modality according to the recipient’s visual attention, waited for a response, and produced further gestures when the recipient did not respond in a way that satisfied their apparent goal.

Dr Lucy Bates  from the University of Portsmouth, co-author of the study, said: "Tracking and understanding that communication is not easy - it takes a lot of painstaking work. So, to have identified so many different gesture types - as ways of communicating clear messages to 'move away', or ‘stop what you are doing’ - is really exciting. We humans use gesture all the time to get our meaning across to people we are talking to. Knowing that elephants also use these signals to communicate with each other suggests gesturing could be a feature of highly intelligent animals that have complex social lives.”

Vesta Eleuteri from the University of Vienna, lead author of the study, said: “If you spend time observing wild elephants, you can’t help but notice their conspicuous gestures. They may fling their trunk or spread their ears wide, and you intuitively understand that ‘they mean business’. But until now, we didn’t know whether wild elephants were using these gestures to communicate intentionally.

Here we find for the first time that, in competitive situations, wild elephants use intentionally over 40 different gesture types made up of 32 gesture actions to achieve two main goals. They ask their recipients to ‘Move away’ or ‘Stop what they’re doing’.”

Of the 33 gesture types recorded in successful communications, 21 (64 per cent) were used for both meanings, suggesting that elephants do not rigidly use gestures with a single goal, but rather communicate flexibly.

Vesta Eleuteri added: "Such extensive, flexible gestural repertoires have previously been shown in apes and a few other primates. Finding the same in elephants is particularly exciting because elephants are so evolutionarily distant from primates. It suggests that sophisticated gestural communication may have evolved convergently in species that share advanced intelligence and complex social lives."

The study compared the gestures used by two South African populations and their findings with the ElephantVoices database based on observations from populations in Kenya and Mozambique.

Vesta said: “The populations shared the same gesture types, suggesting that elephants may share a common gestural ‘vocabulary’ across populations”.

The researchers say the findings provide a foundation for understanding intentional gestural communication in wild elephants and highlight the need for further research into how elephants use gestures in other contexts.

Prof Angela Stoeger from the University of Vienna, senior author of the study who mainly studies vocal communication in elephants said: These findings underscore why studying multiple modalities is essential. In the future, studying the interplay of acoustic, visual, tactile, and seismic signals, together with context, will finally reveal their messages".

Elephants face several conservation challenges, including habitat loss leading to conflict with humans. The findings carry conservation implications.

Dr Bates concludes: “This work is important because humans and elephants increasingly come into contact with each other, as human populations expand in elephant range-states. Understanding how elephants communicate when they’re feeling threatened could help us better read their intentions or recognise when they don’t want us around, giving us the chance to move away before interactions become dangerous”.

---

Journal

Animal Cognition

DOI

10.1007/s10071-026-02108-7

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Elephant gestural communication during agonistic interactions: repertoire, intentionality, and goals

The male elephant on the right performs an Ear Flap to the younger male on the left.

Credit

Credit: Vesta Eleuteri

 

Plating matters: How sauce placement can make a dish appear healthier

Researchers found that placing sauces separately can make a dish appear healthier even before tasting

Keio University Global Research Institute

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

image: 

The sturgeon-filet dish presented using two different sauce arrangements: minimal plating (left) with sauces placed separately on the plate, and drizzle presentation (right), with sauces distributed across the plate and around the food.

view more 

Credit: Motoki et al. (2026) Image link: https://doi.org/10.3390/foods15173081

Our experience of eating is shaped by the combined influence of vision, smell, touch, and taste. The way food is presented can shape diners’ expectations before they even taste it. Visual features, such as arrangement and esthetic design, can influence perceptions of taste, quality, healthiness, and overall appeal. Although previous studies have examined factors such as plate size, arrangement, and neatness, relatively little attention has been given to sauce presentation. Sauces can serve as both flavor additions and visual elements, and their placement may shape how diners perceive and interact with a dish.

To investigate these effects, researchers led by Dr. Kosuke Motoki of the Faculty of Business and Commerce, Keio University, Japan, examined how chef-designed sauce presentations influence consumers’ evaluations of a dish. The research was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kohei Yamaguchi and Dr. Haruka Tohara of the Department of Dysphagia Rehabilitation, Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, and Dr. Shin-ichi Ishikawa of the Department of Food Science and Business, Miyagi University, Japan, along with Chef Tatsuya Noda of the PLUM KNOT Co., Ltd., Japan. Their findings were published in Volume 15, Issue 17 of the journal Foods on August 31, 2026.

The idea for the study grew from discussions among Dr. Motoki, Dr. Yamaguchi, Dr. Ishikawa, and Chef Noda about food artistry and plating at 8go, the restaurant at Gastronomy Innovation Campus Tokyo (GIC Tokyo), where the study was later conducted. GIC Tokyo, developed in partnership with Tokyo Tatemono Co., Ltd., provides a collaborative setting for researchers, chefs, and industry partners.

“Our study involved 57 participants in a real restaurant setting at 8go, where we evaluated the same sturgeon-fritter dish presented with two different sauce arrangements. Sturgeon aquaculture is primarily oriented toward caviar production, while sturgeon meat is less commercially prominent. Its fuller use may improve resource efficiency, placing the study in a sustainability-oriented culinary context,” explains Dr. Motoki.

Participants evaluated a sturgeon-filet dish in two ways. In the minimal plating condition, sauces were placed separately on the plate, while in the drizzle presentation condition, sauces were distributed across the plate and around the food. Each participant experienced both versions, allowing the researchers to compare individual responses. The dish was prepared in collaboration with a professional chef from a restaurant recognized with a Michelin Green Star.

Before tasting, participants rated various measures including expected tastiness, perceived healthiness, intention to eat, overall liking, perceived artistic presentation, and willingness to pay. Minimal plating produced a significantly higher perceived healthiness rating than drizzle presentation: 4.65/7 compared with 4.05/7. This difference remained significant after correction for multiple comparisons.

“We observed that minimal plating made the same dish appear healthier, showing how small visual details can influence our first impressions of the food,” notes Dr. Motoki.

No significant differences were found in the other pre-tasting measures. After tasting, minimal presentation received higher ratings for overall liking and intention to eat more, but these differences did not remain significant after correction for multiple comparisons and were therefore considered preliminary.

One possible explanation for the pre-consumption healthiness finding could be visual simplicity. The minimal presentation may appear less visually dense, potentially associating it with qualities such as simplicity or naturalness. Additionally, separately placed sauces may also give diners greater control over how much sauce they use, which could influence the eating experience. However, these mechanisms were not directly measured.

The findings offer a practical direction for evidence-based food presentation in restaurants and hospitality. “By bringing together researchers, a professional chef, and 8go as a real-world research setting within GIC Tokyo, we were able to examine how chef-designed plating shapes diners’ evaluations before and after tasting,” says Dr. Motoki. These findings show that sauce placement can help communicate a healthier impression. The preliminary post-tasting results also provide a starting point for investigating whether presentation and the way diners use the sauce may influence enjoyment.

Importantly, the researchers emphasize that looking healthier does not necessarily mean being nutritionally healthier. Further studies across different foods, plating styles, and dining environments are needed to gain deeper insights.

 

***

 

Reference

Title of original paper: How Chef‑Designed Plating Shapes Consumer Evaluations of a Dish in a Real Restaurant Setting

Journal: Foods

DOI: 10.3390/foods15173081

 

About Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI), Japan
The Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI), established in November 2016, serves as a university-wide platform connecting faculties and graduate schools. It promotes interdisciplinary and international collaborative research that transcends academic and geographic boundaries, while disseminating research outcomes both domestically and globally.

In 2024, Keio University launched the Program for Forming Japan’s Peak Research Universities (J-PEAKS), funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), under the vision of becoming a “research university that forges the common sense of the future.” Through this initiative, KGRI is strengthening research infrastructure to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration, promoting the societal implementation of research, and fostering a research ecosystem that enables collaboration across the university and with leading institutions in Japan and abroad.

Website: https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/org/kgri/

 

About Associate Professor Kosuke Motoki from Keio University
Kosuke Motoki is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business and Commerce at Keio University, Japan. His research focuses on consumer psychology, sensory and consumer science, particularly how sensory cues influence consumer perceptions and eating behavior. His work has been recognized with the 2023 Ando Momofuku Award in Japan and the 2023 Food Quality and Preference Award for Contributions by a Researcher of the Future.

 

Funding information
This research received no external funding.

---

Journal

Foods

DOI

10.3390/foods15173081

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

How Chef‑Designed Plating Shapes Consumer Evaluations of a Dish in a Real Restaurant Setting

COI Statement

Tatsuya Noda is employed by PLUM KNOT Co., Ltd. The company was commissioned and paid by the researchers to prepare the food materials used in this study. Tatsuya Noda participated in the preparation of the food materials. PLUM KNOT Co., Ltd., did not provide funding for this study and had no involvement in the study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation of the results, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.