In previous works, I examine inferential methods employed in Probabilistic Weather Event Attribution studies (PEAs), and explored various ways they can be used to aid in climate policy decisions and decision-making about climate justice issues. This paper evaluates limitations of PEAs and considers how PEA researchers’ attributions of “liability” to specific countries for specific extreme weather events could be made more ethical. In sum, I show that it is routinely presupposed that PEA methods are not prone to inductive risks and presuppose that PEA researchers thus have no epistemic consequences or responsibilities for their attributions of liability. I argue that although PEAs are nevertheless crucially useful for practical decision-making, the attributions of liability made by PEA researchers are in fact prone to indicative risks and are influenced by non-epistemic values that PEA researchers should make transparent to make such studies more ethical. Finally, I outline possible normative approaches for making sciences, including PEAs, more ethical; and discuss implications of my arguments for the ongoing debate about how PEAs should guide climate policy and relevant legal decisions.

在以前的作品中，我研究了概率天气事件归因研究 (PEA) 中采用的推理方法，并探索了它们可用于帮助气候政策决策和有关气候正义问题的决策的各种方法。本文评估了 PEA 的局限性，并考虑了如何使 PEA 研究人员对特定国家对特定极端天气事件的“责任”归属更加合乎道德。总之，我表明通常假设 PEA 方法不容易出现归纳风险，并且假设 PEA 研究人员因此对其责任归属没有认知后果或责任。我认为尽管 PEA 对于实际决策至关重要，PEA 研究人员所做的责任归属实际上容易产生指示性风险，并受到非认知价值的影响，PEA 研究人员应使其透明化以使此类研究更具道德性。最后，我概述了使包括 PEA 在内的科学更符合伦理的可能的规范方法；并讨论我的论点对正在进行的关于 PEA 应如何指导气候政策和相关法律决定的辩论的影响。