265 Global Warming
265 全球变暖
When global warming finally came, it stuck with a vengeance. In some regions, temperatures rose several degrees in less than a century. Sea levels shot up nearly 400 feet, flooding coastal settlements and forcing people to migrate inland. Deserts spread throughout the world as vegetation shifted drastically in North America, Europe and Asia. After driving many of the animals around them to near extinction, people were forced to abandon their old way of life for a radically new survival strategy that resulted in widespread starvation and disease. The adaptation was farming: the global-warming crisis that gave rise to it happened more than l0,000 years ago.
当全球终于开始变暖时，它显得非常的异乎寻常。在一些地区，气温在短短的一个世纪内就上升了好几度。海面一下子上涨了近400英尺，洪水泛滥，使沿海地区面临着沉降的危险，还迫使当地居民往内陆地区迁移。随着北美，欧洲和亚洲地区的植被大幅度减少，沙漠随之在全世界蔓延开来。在把身边的动物逼迫到几乎灭绝的境地之后，人类被迫放弃原有的生活方式，而代之以一种全新的生存策略，其结果便是普遍的饥饿和疾病。改变的形式就是农耕，而导致这一改变的全球气候变暖危机早在一万年以前就开始了。
As environmentalists convene in rio de Janeiro this week to ponder the global climate of the future, earth scientists are in the midst of a revolution in understanding how climate has changed in the past --and how those changes have transformed human existence. Researchers have begun to piece together an illuminating picture of the powerful geo1ogical and astronomical forces that have combined to change the planet's environment from hot to cold, wet to dry and back again over a time Period stretching back hundreds of millions of years.
当环境学家们于本周聚集在里约热内卢思考未来全球气候时，地球科学家们也正在重新认识过去的气候是怎样改变的，以及这些变化是怎样改变人类生活的。研究者们已开始拼凑一幅非常具有启发意义的图画，该图画显示了巨大的地质和天文能量是如何结合在一起来共同影响地球环境的，是使地球环境由炎热变为寒冷，由潮湿变为干燥，并在上百万年之后又重新再来。
Most important, scientists are beginning to realize that the climatic changes have had a major impact on the evolution of the human species. New research now suggests that climate shifts have played a key role in nearly every significant turning point in human evolution: from the dawn of Primates some 65 million years ago to human ancestors rising up to walk on two legs, from the huge expansion of the human brain to the rise of agriculture. Indeed, the human history has not been merely touched by global climate change, some scientists argue, it has in some instances been driven by it.
最重要的是，科学家们开始意识到气候的改变已经对人类的发展产生了非常重要的影响。新的研究表明，在人类演化的过程中，几乎每一个重要转变都要受到气候变化的影响，不论是在6500万年之前灵长动物的出现，到人类的祖先开始用两条腿直立行走，还是从人脑的极速发展到农业的产生。事实上，一些科学家们认为，人类的历史不仅仅受到气候交化的影响，在某些情况下还是受它驱动的。
The new research has profound implications for the environmental summit in Rio. Among other things, the findings demonstrate that dramatic climate change is nothing new for planet Earth. The benign global environment that has existed over the past l0,000years - during which agriculture, writing, cities and most other features of civilization appeared -- is a mere bright spot in a much large pattern of widely varying climate over the ages. In fact the pattern of climate change in the past reveals that Earth's climate will almost certainly go through dramatic changes in the future -- even without the influence of human activity.
新的研究发现给里约热内卢召开的环境峰会带来了重大的启示，这些新发现表明，气候的急剧变化对地球而言并不是新问题。在过去的一万多年中，使得农业，文学，城市和其他文明产生的宜人的全球气候只不过是数个世纪来急剧变化的气候模式中的一个亮点。事实上，这种以往的气候变化的模式表明，未来地球气候还是会发生巨大的改变——即使没有人类活动的影响。