In an article he wrote as the floodwaters inched closer to his kitchen door, Allen argued that it might not always be impossible to attribute extreme weather events to climate change—it was just “simply impossible at present, given our current state of understanding of the climate system.” And if researchers were ever able to make that breakthrough, he mused, the science could potentially influence the public’s ability to blame greenhouse gas emitters for the damages caused by climate-related events. Allen’s commentary was published in February 2003 in the prestigious journal Nature with the
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