The NIPCC informs us of a report that, if the data are accurate, suggests that:

“… massive social disturbance, societal collapse, and population collapse often coincided with great climate change in America, the Middle East, China, and many other countries in pre-industrial times. … climate change was the ultimate cause, and climate-driven economic downturn was the direct cause, of large-scale human crises in pre-industrial Europe and the Northern Hemisphere.”

What potentially upsets the “global warming is a bad thing” crowd is that the time periods in which the report’s scientists found the greatest amount of measurable climate change were times when it was colder:

… it was cooling that triggered the chain of negative responses in variables pertaining to physical and human systems. Initially, for example, they found that agricultural production “decreased or stagnated in a cold climate and increased rapidly in a mild climate at the multi-decadal timescale,” while the time course of crisis development was such that “bio-productivity, agricultural production and food supply per capita (FSPC) sectors responded to temperature change immediately, whereas the social disturbance, war, migration, nutritional status, epidemics, famine and population sectors responded to the drop in FSPC with a 5- to 30-year time lag.”

The NIPCC sums it up:

As a result of such findings, it can well be concluded from the several centuries of European and Northern Hemispheric data that warming and warmth beget human wellness, while cooling and cold produce human misery.