Climate Change, Hurricanes and the Hazards of Connecting Dots

It may be human nature to want to assign blame for terrible events — and since climate change became part of public consciousness, it's a frequently faulted for natural disasters. Is Hurricane Florence our fault for emitting climate-changing greenhouse gases, or perhaps policy makers’ fault for allowing us to do so?

The answer is the same one that applies to cancer. Environmental factors such as excessive UV radiation, secondhand smoke and certain chemical exposures increase risk, but cancer has been around since the age of the dinosaurs, and there’s an element of randomness to it. It may be impossible to conclude any single risk factor was the single cause of any given case.