In a recent very influential court case, Juliana v. United States, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth used the “storyline” approach to extreme event attribution to argue that greenhouse warming had affected and will affect extreme events in their regions to such an extent that the plaintiffs already had been or will be harmed. The storyline approach to attribution is deterministic rather than probabilistic, taking certain factors as contingent and assessing the role of climate change conditional on those factors. The US Government’s opposing expert witness argued that Trenberth had failed to make his case because “all his conclusions of the injuries to Plaintiffs suffer from the same failure to connect his conditional approach to Plaintiffs’ local circumstances.” The issue is whether it is possible to make statements about individual events based on general knowledge. A similar question is sometimes debated within the climate science community. We argue here that proceeding from the general to the specific is a process of deduction and is an entirely legitimate form of scientific reasoning. We further argue that it is well aligned with the concept of legal evidence, much more so than the more usual inductive form of scientific reasoning, which proceeds from the specific to the general. This has implications for how attribution science can be used to support climate change litigation.

“The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.” “The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).

在最近一个非常有影响力的法庭案件中，朱莉安娜诉美国, 气候科学家凯文·特伦伯斯 (Kevin Trenberth) 使用“故事情节”方法来归因极端事件，以辩称温室变暖已经影响并将影响其所在地区的极端事件，以至于原告已经或将受到伤害。归因的故事情节方法是确定性的而不是概率性的，将某些因素视为偶然因素，并根据这些因素评估气候变化的作用。美国政府的反对专家证人辩称，Trenberth 未能提出他的理由，因为“他对原告受伤的所有结论都同样未能将他的有条件方法与原告的当地情况联系起来。” 问题是是否有可能根据常识对个别事件作出陈述。气候科学界有时会讨论类似的问题。我们在这里争辩说，从普遍到具体是一个演绎过程，是一种完全合法的科学推理形式。我们进一步认为，它与法律证据的概念非常吻合，比更常见的科学推理的归纳形式更为一致，后者从具体到普遍。这对于如何使用归因科学来支持气候变化诉讼具有重要意义。从具体到一般。这对于如何使用归因科学来支持气候变化诉讼具有重要意义。从具体到一般。这对于如何使用归因科学来支持气候变化诉讼具有重要意义。

“问题是”，爱丽丝说，“你是否可以让单词表达不同的意思。” “问题是，”矮胖子说，“谁才是主人——仅此而已。” （刘易斯卡罗尔，爱丽丝梦游仙境）。