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.

澳大利亚国立大学的流行病理学家安东尼·麦克迈克尔调查了在气候变化造成的一连串极端天气情况下，人类社会是如何生存的。他认为，食物生产的变化是一个极大的威胁。他还指出，我们使用矿物燃料对气候造成的影响，规模之大、速度之快、传播之广，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.

长期的气候变化已造成文化的衰落，包括粉碎1.3万年前早期人类想要安顿下来务农的打算。在尼罗河三角洲地带与现今的叙利亚地区就曾发生了“新仙女木事件”（一次严重而漫长的降温期）。麦克迈克尔指出，那个时期的骨骼显示出“极高的暴力死亡率，并伴有大量的武器残骸”。大约在公元760年到公元920年间，连续三次长达几十年的旱灾对中美洲的玛雅社会造成了巨大打击，标志着玛雅文明对该地区的统治结束。

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.

短期的气候变化已被证明对文化具有同样的破坏性。在17世纪中国发生的一场长达十年的旱灾，导致饥荒和境内迁移，使其成为明朝衰落的一个原因。14世纪早期，一场跨度七年的暴雨，以及随之而来的洪水和寒潮带来的饥荒，可能使北欧10%的人口死亡。在其后几十年，那一代人所面对的是黑死病。