Nuclear Terrorism A Clear Danger. Surely after such an event, global leaders would produce a strong global system to ensure nuclear security. There is no reason to wait for a catastrophe to build such a system. Photo. Credit. Cristbal Schmal The conventional wisdom is that domestic regulations, U. N. Security Council resolutions, G 8 initiatives, I. A. E. A. activities and other voluntary efforts will prevent nuclear terrorism. But existing global arrangements for nuclear security lack uniformity and coherence. There are no globally agreed standards for effectively securing nuclear material. There is no obligation to follow the voluntary standards that do exist and no institution, not even the I. A. E. A., with a mandate to evaluate nuclear security performance. This patchwork approach provides the appearance of dealing with nuclear security the reality is there are gaps through which a determined terrorist group could drive one or more nuclear devices. Obamas initiative in launching the nuclear security summit process in Washington in 2. Unfortunately, the actions produced by the 2. Washington Summit and that are planned for the upcoming Seoul Summit are voluntary actions that are useful, but not sufficient to create an effective global nuclear security regime. The world cannot afford to wait for the patchwork of nuclear security arrangements to fail before they are strengthened. Instead, we need a system based on a global framework convention on nuclear security that would fill the gaps in existing voluntary arrangements. See in this Icecap story how the changes are cyclical as Tony shows with data and news accounts including the New York Times. We showed how the water from the. This framework convention would commit states to an effective standard of nuclear security practices, incorporate relevant existing international agreements, and give the I. A. E. A. the mandate to support nuclear security by evaluating whether states are meeting their nuclear security obligations and providing assistance to those states that need help in doing so. Nuclear terrorism is a real and present danger for all states, not just a few. Preventing it is an achievable goal. The current focus on nuclear security through voluntary actions, however, is not commensurate with either the risk or consequences of nuclear terrorism. This must be rectified. If the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit makes this a priority, there can be an effective global nuclear security regime in place before this decade ends. Kenneth C. Brill. U. S. ambassador to the I. A. E. A. Kenneth N. Luongo. is president of the Partnership for Global Security. Both are members of the Fissile Material Working Group, a nonpartisan nongovernmental organization. Continue reading the main story. Little Ice Age Wikipedia. For the most recent period much colder than present and with significant glaciation, see Last glacial period. The reconstructed depth of the Little Ice Age varies between different studies anomalies shown are from the 1. The Little Ice Age LIA was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period. Although it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by Franois E. Matthes in 1. 93. It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the 1. Climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of the period, which varied according to local conditions. The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals one beginning about 1. Ice Age Four' title='Ice Age Four' />The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Security Policy Restricts Use Of Wifi here. Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the Little Ice Age suggested largely independent regional climate changes rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most, there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period. Several causes have been proposed cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earths orbit and axial tilt orbital forcing, inherent variability in global climate, and decreases in the human population. Areas involvededitThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Third Assessment Report TAR of 2. Evidence from mountain glaciers does suggest increased glaciation in a number of widely spread regions outside Europe prior to the twentieth century, including Alaska, New Zealand and Patagonia. However, the timing of maximum glacial advances in these regions differs considerably, suggesting that they may represent largely independent regional climate changes, not a globally synchronous increased glaciation. Thus current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this interval, and the conventional terms of Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries. Viewed hemispherically, the Little Ice Age can only be considered as a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this period of less than 1C relative to late twentieth century levels. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report AR4 of 2. Medieval Warm Period. It states that when viewed together, the currently available reconstructions indicate generally greater variability in centennial time scale trends over the last 1 kyr than was apparent in the TAR. The result is a picture of relatively cool conditions in the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries and warmth in the eleventh and early fifteenth centuries, but the warmest conditions are apparent in the twentieth century. Given that the confidence levels surrounding all of the reconstructions are wide, virtually all reconstructions are effectively encompassed within the uncertainty previously indicated in the TAR. The major differences between the various proxy reconstructions relate to the magnitude of past cool excursions, principally during the twelfth to fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are from a 1. Hvalsey Church, now the best preserved of the Norse ruins. There is no consensus regarding the time when the Little Ice Age began,1. In the 1. 3th century, pack ice began advancing southwards in the North Atlantic, as did glaciers in Greenland. Anecdotal evidence suggests expanding glaciers almost worldwide. Based on radiocarbon dating of roughly 1. Baffin Island and Iceland, Miller et al. In contrast, a climate reconstruction based on glacial length1. Therefore, any of several dates ranging over 4. Little Ice Age 1. Atlanticpack ice began to grow cold period possibly triggered or enhanced by the massive eruption of Samalas volcano in 1. Northern Europe. 13. Great Famine of 1. The Little Ice Age ended in the latter half of the 1. Northern HemisphereeditThe Little Ice Age brought colder winters to parts of Europe and North America. Farms and villages in the Swiss Alps were destroyed by encroaching glaciers during the mid 1. Canals and rivers in Great Britain and the Netherlands were frequently frozen deeply enough to support ice skating and winter festivals. The first River Thames frost fair was in 1. Thames Embankment affected the river flow and depth, greatly diminishing the possibility of further freezes. Freezing of the Golden Horn and the southern section of the Bosphorus took place in 1. In 1. 65. 8, a Swedish army marched across the Great Belt to Denmark to attack Copenhagen. The winter of 1. 79. French invasion army under Pichegru was able to march on the frozen rivers of the Netherlands, and the Dutch fleet was fixed in the ice in Den Helder harbour. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing harbors to shipping. The population of Iceland fell by half, but that may have been caused by skeletal fluorosis after the eruption of Laki in 1. Iceland also suffered failures of cereal crops and people moved away from a grain based diet. The Norse colonies in Greenland starved and vanished by the early 1. Jared Diamond has suggested they had exceeded the agricultural carrying capacity before then. Greenland was largely cut off by ice from 1. Winter skating on the main canal of Pompenburg, Rotterdam in 1. Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove. The Twentieth Century climatologist Hubert Lamb said that in many years, snowfall was much heavier than recorded before or since, and the snow lay on the ground for many months longer than it does today. In Lisbon, Portugal, snowstorms were much more frequent than today one winter in the 1. Many springs and summers were cold and wet but with great variability between years and groups of years. Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened, less reliable growing season, and there were many years of dearth and famine such as the Great Famine of 1. Little Ice Age. 2. According to Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent, Famines in France 1. Norway 1. 69. 59. Sweden 1. 69. 69. In Estonia and Finland in 1. Viticulture disappeared from some northern regions and storms caused serious flooding and loss of life. Some of them resulted in permanent loss of large areas of land from the Danish, German, and Dutch coasts. The violin maker Antonio Stradivari produced his instruments during the Little Ice Age. The colder climate is proposed to have caused the wood used in his violins to be denser than in warmer periods, contributing to the tone of his instruments. According to the science historian James Burke, the period inspired such novelties in everyday life as the widespread use of buttons and button holes, knitting of custom made undergarments to better cover and insulate the body. Fireplace hoods were installed to make more efficient use of fires for indoor heating, and enclosed stoves were developed, with early versions often covered with ceramic tiles. The Little Ice Age, by anthropology professor Brian Fagan of the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells of the plight of European peasants during the 1. In the late 1. 7th century, agriculture had dropped off dramatically Alpine villagers lived on bread made from ground nutshells mixed with barley and oat flour. Historian Wolfgang Behringer has linked intensive witch hunting episodes in Europe to agricultural failures during the Little Ice Age. Depictions of winter in European paintingeditWilliam James Burroughs analyses the depiction of winter in paintings, as does Hans Neuberger. Burroughs asserts that it occurred almost entirely from 1. Mirai Service Manual. Burroughs claims that there had been almost no depictions of winter in art, and he hypothesizes that the unusually harsh winter of 1.