Epidemiologist Anthony McMichael of Australian National University surveyed how human societies fared during previous episodes of extreme weather brought on by climate shifts. The big threat is changes to food production. And weve never weathered a climate change so big， so rapid and so widespread as the one we are now busily creating by burning fossil fuels， notes McMichael.

澳大利亞國立大學(xué)的流行病理學(xué)家安東尼·麥克邁克爾調(diào)查了在氣候變化造成的一連串極端天氣情況下，人類社會是如何生存的。他認為，食物生產(chǎn)的變化是一個極大的威脅。他還指出，我們使用礦物燃料對氣候造成的影響，規(guī)模之大、速度之快、傳播之廣，是前所未有的。

Long-running climate changes have often brought about the downfall of cultures， including foiling the earliest human attempts at settled farming nearly 13，000 years ago. Around that time， a major millennia-long climate cooling event known as the “Younger Dryas” coincides with the end of most settlements along the Nile Delta and in modern-day Syria. Skeletons from the era evince “an unusually high proportion of violent deaths， many accompanied by remnants of weapons，” McMichael noted. More recently， three back-to-back decades-long droughts afflicted Mayan society in Central America between roughly 760 and 920 A.D.， and marked the end of that cultures regional dominance.

長期的氣候變化已造成文化的衰落，包括粉碎1.3萬年前早期人類想要安頓下來務(wù)農(nóng)的打算。在尼羅河三角洲地帶與現(xiàn)今的敘利亞地區(qū)就曾發(fā)生了“新仙女木事件”（一次嚴重而漫長的降溫期）。麥克邁克爾指出，那個時期的骨骼顯示出“極高的暴力死亡率，并伴有大量的武器殘骸”。大約在公元760年到公元920年間，連續(xù)三次長達幾十年的旱災(zāi)對中美洲的瑪雅社會造成了巨大打擊，標志著瑪雅文明對該地區(qū)的統(tǒng)治結(jié)束。

Culture destruction caused by shorter-term climate changes have proven equally devastating. Decade-long drought in 17th century China led to starvation， internal migration and， ultimately， one factor of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. A seven-year span of torrential rains， attendant floods and cold in the early 1300s helped cause a famine that may have killed as much as 10 percent of the people in northern Europe—a generation that would then face the Black Death a few decades later.

短期的氣候變化已被證明對文化具有同樣的破壞性。在17世紀中國發(fā)生的一場長達十年的旱災(zāi)，導(dǎo)致饑荒和境內(nèi)遷移，使其成為明朝衰落的一個原因。14世紀早期，一場跨度七年的暴雨，以及隨之而來的洪水和寒潮帶來的饑荒，可能使北歐10%的人口死亡。在其后幾十年，那一代人所面對的是黑死病。