Catastrophe-hopping Spiegel: German news magazine rolls out latest climate horror vision: A burning North Pole

This week's hard copy of features the front cover story dubbed "" - The heated planet - (see image below). Thus, is returning and keeping to its long tradition of promoting end-of world scenarios.

The following image sequence shows how the burning planet is just the latest and newest climate catastrophe designed to get an apocalypse-weary public to worry (and to buy its magazines). So far the reaction, however, has been a big yawn. The world is, after all, full with other concerns.

© Spiegel

depictions over the last decades. 1986 and 2015 were even front cover images. 1974: cooling. 1986: sea level rise. Now, 2015: it’s a burning planet.

1974 - 10,000 to 1 chance at best of planet returning to warming

In 1974 warned of global cooling, writing that climate change was leading to growing deserts and global cooling. The article even claimed that the North Atlantic had cooled 0.5°C - this after "." During that warming period, writes: ."

In the lengthy article even quoted meteorological researcher James McQuigg who said the chances of the climate returning to warmer conditions such as those in the 1930s were "at best 10,000 to 1″.

Also in 11 February, 1974 edition, an article titled The Desert is growing shows a temperature chart that tells us the global temperature fell from 16.0°C to 15.7°C from 1945 to 1970. Someone needs to tell this to NASA GISS. Today aren't they saying the global temperature is now 14.9°? Weird.

1986: "Die Klimakatastrophe"

Then, just 12 years later in 1986, scientists realized the ocean cycles had flipped to their warm phase and so suddenly global warming was back in the pipeline. Immediately ran with its legendary August 11, 1986 edition bearing the front page headline "", which depicted the Cologne Cathedral half submerged in sea water.

Forest die-off scare, acid rain

not only spread fear about climate catastrophes, but it was also instrumental in spreading the acid-rain/forest die-off scare in the 1980s. In 1981 the magazine featured a 3-part series depicting the German forests as being doomed and certain to be forever lost.

Back to some rationality

Over the past years, it seemed had been backing off from global climate catastrophe meme. The flagship news magazine often featured balanced reports, foremost by science journalist Axel Bojanowski, who often questioned the claims of a climate catastrophe and challenged the shrillness of the IPCC's warnings. NoTricksZone often wrote about these articles. It seemed the magazine was back to rational and critical journalism on the topic of climate change, and this fostered hopes of a balanced debate someday taking place in Germany.

2015 Spiegel returns to the apocalypse

But this was wishful thinking, it turns out, as this week on Monday rolled out its latest apocalyptic issue with the front page bearing the headline: "The Heated Planet" and an image of a planet on fire. The article is a repackaging all the doom and gloom scenarios that rest of the German mainstream media had been crowing about for a good two decades now. Balance has disappeared, regrettably.

Plummeting circulation

So why suddenly the change in tone? One can only speculate. Clear is that circulation has been taking a massive beating over the recent years. For example in the 3rd quarter of 2014 alone newsstand sales fell a whopping 12 percent, so reports the online horizont.net.

The European Institute for Climate and Energy presents the chart for subscriptions to

Veteran science journalist Ulli Kulke of flagship Die Welt writes at his blog:

Does the new editorial board at want to scale the magazine back to being a warrior on behalf of the environment? Will the critical journalism over the past years that questioned the increasingly baseless end-of-world-mood now come to an end? The new frontpage cover "The Heated Planet" appears to be going back to the good old days of the apocalypse..."

PS: So far none of the catastrophes have come to pass.

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'Mind reading' neurones help predict behaviour of others

© memerym/iStockphoto

A new study on rhesus monkeys sheds light on co-operative behaviour.

Scientists have discovered a group of neurones that enable one monkey to predict what another monkey is about to do - the first-known instance of neurones calculating another animal's behaviour.

The discovery may be fundamental for understanding social behaviour and could lead to better treatments for conditions like autism spectrum disorder.

US neuroscientists got pairs of monkeys to play a game based on classic game theory known as 'the prisoner's dilemma.'

Their findings are published today in the journal .

Decisions... decisions

In the game, the monkeys sit side by side facing a computer screens. They can choose either to cooperate (signified by pressing a hexagon on their screen) or to be selfish (by pressing a triangle).

Although they are well aware of each other's presence, neither monkey can see the other's facial expressions, nor can they see the choice the other monkey makes as they make it, explains study co-author neuroscientist Dr Keren Haroush of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA.

Their reward depends on their combined choices. If one monkey chooses to be selfish and the other to cooperate, the selfish monkey wins hands down, getting six drops of juice as a reward while the other (cooperative) monkey gets only one drop.

But if they both choose the selfish option they get just two drops each. Both deciding to cooperate, however, wins them each four drops of juice.

"The only follow-up was at the end of the trial: once they had both made their selections, they got to see what the other one chose." says Haroush.

Not only could they see the choice the other monkey made, they could also hear the drops of juice that it got as a reward.

Listening in

While the monkeys were making up their minds, the researchers were eavesdropping on the neurones in a brain region known as the cingulate cortex.

"We had small microchips inside the brains and we were able to record many neurones at the same time. We could basically 'listen in' on their activity as the monkeys were performing this task," says co-author Associate Professor Ziv Williams, also of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA.

"We found some of these neurones fired differently based on what the other monkey's yet unknown decision was predicted to be. That was pretty remarkable and surprising...we could actually tell what the first monkey thought the other would do way before that decision was revealed," he says.

The researchers recorded from 363 neurones during the games. Of these 32.4 per cent appeared to be involved in predicting what the other monkey would do - attempting to 'mind read' - while a (largely different) 24.3 per cent of neurones seemed to be encoding the monkey's own decision.

"Basically what's happening is these neurones are building up a predictive model of what the other monkey is likely to do in a situation, given their past interactions," says Williams.

Furthermore, the 'mind-reading' neurones appear to be activated more in social situations. When the monkeys played the game in separate rooms (and did not know about each other) or played against a computer, considerably fewer neurones activated by the task were 'mind-reading' ones.

"Our best guess is that these types of neurones are likely to be found in other social animals including humans. However, without testing this hypothesis directly, we currently do not know for certain," remarks Williams.

Social disruption

Haroush and Williams also tried disrupting the cingulate cortex by sending electrical pulses to that part of the brain while the monkeys were doing the task.

They found the monkeys were much less likely to cooperate with each other, even if they had both cooperated on the immediately preceding trial.

The pulses "selectively inhibited their ability to cooperate and to reciprocate past cooperation," says Williams. The pair thinks this demonstrates the key role of the cingulate cortex in social behaviour.

"Ultimately we want to see if we can use some of these insights to develop treatment for social behavioural disorders such as autism and antisocial personality disorders," concludes Williams.

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Dawn mission to Ceres reveals bright spots on dwarf planet

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of dwarf planet Ceres on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers). It shows that the brightest spot on Ceres has a dimmer companion, which apparently lies in the same basin.

Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area.

"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Using its ion propulsion system, Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres on March 6. As scientists receive better and better views of the dwarf planet over the next 16 months, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of its origin and evolution by studying its surface. The intriguing bright spots and other interesting features of this captivating world will come into sharper focus.

"The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres. This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany.

© NASA/JPL-Caltech

These images of dwarf planet Ceres, processed to enhance clarity, were taken on Feb. 19, 2015, from a distance of about 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers), by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Dawn observed Ceres completing one full rotation, which lasted about nine hours.

Dawn visited the giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012, delivering more than 30,000 images of the body along with many other measurements, and providing insights about its composition and geological history. Vesta has an average diameter of 326 miles (525 kilometers), while Ceres has an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers). Vesta and Ceres are the two most massive bodies in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

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US Army's top secret Arctic city under the ice 'Camp Century'

The base was constructed in the late 1950s, during the height of the Cold War, for "research" purposes.

To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a "cover" project, known as Camp Century was launched in 1960. However, unsteady ice conditions within the ice sheet caused the project to be canceled in 1966.

It eventually came out that the ultimate objective of Camp Century was of placing medium-range missiles under the ice - close enough to Moscow to strike targets within the Soviet Union. This was kept secret from the Danish government, which owns Greenland and which was legally a "nuclear free zone", in keeping with Danish policy.

Details of the missile base project were classified for decades, first coming to light in January 1997, when the Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI) was asked by the Danish Parliament to research the history of nuclear weapons in Greenland during the Thulegate scandal.

A report confirmed that the U.S. stockpiled nuclear weapons in Greenland until 1965, contradicting assurances by Danish foreign minister, Niels Helveg Petersen that the weapons were in Greenland's airspace, but never on the ground. The DUPI report also revealed details of Project Iceworm, a hitherto secret United States Army plan to store up to 600 nuclear missiles under the Greenland ice cap.

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Danish workers involved in the clean-up operation claimed long-term health problems resulting from their exposure to the radiation.

The crash-landing of an American B-52 bomber - laden with nuclear weapons - in Greenland in 1968, and the ensuing radioactive effect on local rescue teams, would have been consigned to the footnotes of history had it not been for one intrepid Aarhus radio journalist.

Let me take you back to an Arctic night in January 1968, still the era of the Cold War. An American B-52 bomber gets into trouble, the crew scramble to safety and the plane comes down in Greenland with an enormous amount of weapons-grade plutonium on board. Residents of Greenland working at the American base in Thule immediately set out across the ice with husky teams to get to the downed plane - the Americans desperate to get there before anyone else."

These were the words spoken to the European Parliament in 2007 by Diana Wallis, a British MEP. It sounds like a promising plot for an international blockbuster movie, but this largely forgotten piece of history not only had serious ramifications for the unfortunate workers commissioned to clean up the radioactive debris, but also uncovered clandestine nuclear activity on Danish soil, despite the nuclear-free zone peacetime policy announced by Denmark in 1957.

Perched right at the top of the globe, Thule Air Base has been of enormous strategic importance to the US since its construction in the early 1950s. It's an ideal location for radar to scan the skies for any stray incoming missiles. What the Danish populace did not know or need to know at the time was that, since 1961, nuclear-armed B-52 bombers had been continuously circling Thule Air Base on routine 'hard head' missions, as part of a cold war strategic missile warning system. Not only that, but around 50 nuclear weapons had also been stored at the base between 1958 and 1965.

It was on one of these routine missions on 21 January 1968 that a fire broke out in the cockpit of a B-52 stratofortress. The pilot, Captain John Haug, gave the mayday signal, and the plane, loaded with four nuclear warheads, was abandoned to crash into the ice of Greenland. The husky rescue teams set off and the rest is history, although had it not been for the unrelenting detective work of Aarhus radio journalist Poul Brink almost two decades later, it would have remained in the footnotes.

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From Wikipedia:

Project was the code name for a top secret US Army program during the Cold War to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice - close enough to Moscow to strike targets within the Soviet Union - was kept secret from the Danish government. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicized "cover" project, known as "Camp Century" was launched in 1960. However, unsteady ice conditions within the ice sheet caused the project to be canceled in 1966.

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So much for those sanctions: Russian MICEX stock index is top performer so far this year

© Reuters/Maxim Shemetov

The Russian ruble-denominated MICEX is currently the best performing index this year, with analysts expecting the growth streak to continue, despite rating downgrades, Western sanctions and the plunge in the oil price.

The MICEX has added 27 percent since the start of the year, outperforming some of the leading indices in Germany, France and Italy, MICEX confirmed in an e-mail to RT.

Russian analysts expect the growth to continue during the year. Aleksey Astapov of asset managers Arsagera expects the MICEX to hit 2,100 by the end of 2015, a huge jump from Thursday's reading of 1,750. It's close to the 2011 high, and a further rise could drive the index to its highest level since 2008.

The MICEX hasn't given a forecast but said 2014 market volatility was largely spurred by oil prices and geopolitics, and that forced many foreign investors who had quit Russian stocks to change their attitude to the market in the second half of 2014 and the start of 2015.

"Our data shows that in the beginning of 2015 the overall net purchases of Russian shares by foreign investors were above $656 million (40 billion rubles)," MICEX said.

© Moscow Stock Exchange

An expectation of corporate revenues in Russia is a key factor for index growth, according to Astapov. A combination of a weaker ruble, import substitution and the state support for some industries makes investors believe Russian firms would produce robust results, he said.

'Black Tuesday' that shook the Russian market and the currency in mid-December was just one single 'episode', according to Ivan Tchakarov, a chief economist at Citibank Russia, while investors need to take a broader, more impassionate view.

"Russian market suffered a lot last year, which led investors to lose interest, but now there are hopes that geopolitics are looking a bit better, so there are some investors trying to come back selectively and from very low levels," Tchakarov told RT.

Western pressure and prospects

The downgrade on the Russian economy to non-investment grade by the two global rating agencies S&P and Moody's were largely anticipated, and the effect on the Russian market will be limited, analysts agree.

"There were expectations building up that Russia will be downgraded to junk. That's how we can justify the effect that the Russian market has strengthened at the beginning of the year exactly the time when we have downgrades to junk," Tchakarov said.

"Our personal view is that S&P and Moody's have an unnecessarily bearish view on the Russian economy that led them to thinking about downgrades. We don't disagree that it will be a difficult year for the Russian economy - quite the opposite - we also expect a recession, but we do not think it will be as deep and as painful as it is anticipated by Moody's. This is the reason why we still think that Russia deserves to be at Investment grade status," Tchakarov said.

Sober-minded investors are skeptical about the data that the rating agencies release, and consider them to be 'politicized', Astapov wrote Russia Today in an e-mail.

The Western sanctions against Russia that have already hit both sides are in fact good for Russia, Astapov said.

"... we think, it [the sanctions - Ed.] is a good challenge for the Russian economy and a good reason to start the escalated economic reforms oriented at domestic resources," he said.

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TEPCO officials admit to concealing Fukushima radioactive leak

© AP Photo/ Toshiaki Shimizu

Tokyo Electric Power Co., TEPCO, has been slammed by fishermen, for knowingly allowing radioactive substances to flow freely into the sea for ten months.

Operators of the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant admitted that a drainage ditch allowed highly-contaminated water to flow into the sea, and that the leak was first detected back in May 2014.

Fishermen were shocked to hear such confession, voicing disappointment in the company that has been criticized for the cleanup of the Fukushima disaster that happened four years ago.

"I don't understand why you (TEPCO) kept silent about the leakage even though you knew about it. Fishery operators are absolutely shocked," Masakazu Yabuki, chief of the Iwaki fisheries cooperative said.

A TEPCO officials justified the cover-up saying the company found out during an investigation.

"This was part of an ongoing investigation in which we discovered a water puddle with high levels of radiation on top of the Reactor No. 2 building, and because this also happens to be one of the sources for this drainage system, we decided to report everything all at once."

A company spokesperson added that it did not disclosed the leak because samples from ocean water surrounding the area showed no substantial spikes of hazardous material.

TEPCO had to get permission from the fishermen to dispose of groundwater in the surrounding ocean.

In Sept. 2013, when Tokyo was announced to be the host country for 2020 Summer Olympics, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised the International Olympic Committee that all radiation leaks at the tsunami-ravaged plant were "under control."

The Japanese government also announced that TEPCO would be the main sponsor of the 2020 Olympics.

Meanwhile, TEPCO maintains that the contaminated water that has been freely leaking into the Pacific Ocean does not violate regulations and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has not detected a spike in the level of toxins.

In March 2011, the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Japan was hit by a massive earthquake-triggered tsunami that led to meltdown of three of the plant's six nuclear reactions. Four people were killed, 37 had physical injuries and two were taken to the hospital for radiation burns. The entire death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is estimated to be around 20,000.

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Local, state, and federal authorities raid Texas secessionist meeting

It seemed like a typical congressional meeting for the Republic of Texas. Senators and the president gathered in the center of a Bryan, Texas, meeting hall, surrounded by public onlookers, to debate issues of the national currency, develop international relations and celebrate the birthday of one of their oldest members.

But this wasn't 1836, and this would be no ordinary legislative conference. Minutes into the meeting a man among the onlookers stood and moved to open the hall door, letting in an armed and armored force of the Bryan Police Department, the Brazos County Sheriff's Office, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office, Agents of the Texas District Attorney, the Texas Rangers and the FBI.

In the end, at least 20 officers corralled, searched and fingerprinted all 60 meeting attendees, before seizing all cellphones and recording equipment in a Valentine's Day 2015 raid on the Texas separatist group.

"We had no idea what was going on," said John Jarnecke, president of the Republic of Texas. "We knew of nothing that would warrant such an action."

The raid was a response to legal summons sent by Republic of Texas members to a Kerr County judge and bank employee, demanding they appear in the Republic's court at the Veterans and Foreign Wars building in Bryan the day the officers stormed in. Jarnecke's group, the subject of a half-hour YouTube documentary, maintains a small working government, including official currency, congress and courts.

"You can't just let people go around filing false documents to judges trying to make them appear in front of courts that aren't even real courts," said Kerr County sheriff Rusty Hierholzer, who led the operation.

He acknowledged he used a "show of force," grouping officers from city, county state and federal law enforcement to serve a search warrant for suspicions of a misdemeanor crime. He said he had worries that some extremists in the group could become violent, citing a 1997 incident when 300 state troopers surrounded an armed Republic leader for a weeklong standoff.

"We've had years of bad press, but we're not those people," said Jarnecke of the '97 incident. "But yes, we are still making every attempt to get independence for Texas and we're doing it in a lawful international manner."

The Republic has a lengthy list of qualms with the federal government, among them that Texas was illegally annexed in 1845. But most of their complaints have to do with the behavior of the American legislature and executive. Robert Wilson, a senator in the Republic, equated politicians in Washington D.C. to the "kings and emperors" of the past, and sees Texas independence as part of a worldwide movement for local control.

"This is the century for colonialist ambitions to be reversed," the 78-year-old pastor said. "I've watched a lot of things happen, and the people of the world are fed up. The spirit of the world right now is: make things smaller, move governments closer to home, take back self-rule."

Jarnecke said he was being taxed by a foreign government that he feels doesn't represent him, and protested having to fund bank bailouts and foreign wars.

"According to the U.S. Constitution, the only place any army should be is guarding our own borders, not invading and trying to impose their will on every other country of the world," Jarnecke said.

Still, he and Wilson said their group would not resort to violence, but is working through world courts to get international recognition of an independent Texas. They said their methods are legal, but Sheriff Hierholzer contests that.

"We've had a lot of dealings with Republic of Texas members in the past here, too, flooding the court with simulated documents," he said. "I don't have any problem with them going back to the Republic of Texas but they need to do it through the proper legal channels."

The judge and banker summoned to the Republic's court had been involved in the foreclosure of a member's Kerr County house. The invalid court summon was signed by Susan Cammak, the Kerr County homeowner, and David Kroupa, a Republic of Texas judge from Harris County.

A search warrant, photographed and emailed by a Republic of Texas member before her phone was confiscated, accuses the two of "simulating legal process." It also authorizes the seizure of all computers, media storage, software, cell phones and paper documents. Hierholzer said the seized devices will be downloaded and reviewed to determine if others conspired in the creation and issuance of false court documents.

Police searched and fingerprinted each person at the meeting, but they did not perform cheek-swab DNA testing as the warrant allowed.

No arrests were made in the raid, but the case is still under investigation, Hierholzer said. The FBI and Texas Rangers would not comment.

Jarnecke acknowledged that legislation and court summons issues by the Republic have no real effect, but said the group was close to taking their case to an international court—they haven't yet selected which. He hopes that will be the first step in rallying for Texas independence.

"I'm positive we will get out independence back at some point in time," he said. "Now we're just trying to nip things in the bud ahead of time to make sure the people are the ones that have the power when it happens, not the government."

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