The Danger Season Squad

In the climate science system, human-caused disasters are considered especially heinous. In the Union of Concerned Scientists, the dedicated science detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Danger Season Squad. These are their stories.

I’m Danger Season beat reporter Jess Phoenix, and this is science noir.

SCENE 2 – INT. NEWSPAPER OFFICE – EVENING

JESS V.O.: In this country, disaster’s a form of entertainment. Wildfires, floods, storms, droughts…every way you turn there’s another boogeyman waiting to ambush the unsuspecting public.

Across the Western United States, millions of acres of forests have fallen victim to vicious wildfires in recent years. Climate change just keeps making summers hotter, the atmosphere drier, and rainfall rarer: long story short, these forests are sitting ducks.

Back in the day, we could count on these crimes taking place from July to October. But nowadays? Our culprits are getting braver. If we can’t fight them, we won’t just have a Danger Season – we'll be up against a Danger Year.

Look here, in Paradise, California. The aftermath of another fire. This town’s nightmare is only just beginning – but there’s still time for other towns if the Danger Season Squad has anything to say about it.

Detective Carly Phillips is at the scene of the crime, trying to pin down our primary suspects.

SCENE 3 – EXT. SMOKING BUILDING RUINS – MORNING

CARLY V.O.: The name's Phillips. Detective Carly Phillips. I've been part of the Danger Season Squad for a couple of years now. I'm gonna cough up a lung, you can't escape the smoke. There's flames everywhere. There are trees on fire. Buildings on fire. And I'm looking at this tragic scene. All that's left of Paradise, California. The data don't lie. Believe me when I say that these wildfires are anything but natural. Summer's not the same as it used to be. It's hotter, it's drier, and all because us humans are hopped up on fossil fuels.

JESS V.O.: The Black Bear Diner, reduced to smoldering ash. The new pizza joint, Mama Celeste’s, now just a pile of twisted black rubble. Churches, elementary schools, mobile home parks…nowhere and no one was safe when Paradise became an inferno. Detective Phillips stumbled past hulking wrecks of abandoned jalopies and pickups, skirting around the medics who were far too late to save the scores of people murdered by this monster of a fire. Those poor souls never had a chance. Finding the culprits and holding them responsible is the Danger Squad’s mission, and Phillips knew the jig was almost up.

CARLY V.O.: California is just one hot spot. We know that this killer is active in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California. And we know that this killer won't stop. As temperatures climb higher and higher, these fires, they could become our new normal. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Big Oil's got a hand in this. They've been lying to us for years about what they knew, when they knew it, how bad this climate change was gonna get. All so they could keep selling their fossil fuels to make a buck. It's criminal, plain and simple. It's time to get out of here and go meet that UCS Newsy.

JESS V.O.: We gotta put the chill on this crime spree before it’s curtains for more regular folks. While Detective Phillips finished up in Paradise, another member of the Danger Season Squad was down south.

Detective Juan Declet-Barreto was in Phoenix, following the smoking hot trail of another Danger Season killer – extreme heat.

SCENE 4 – EXT. DOWNTOWN PHOENIX – AFTERNOON

JUAN V.O.: The name's Declet Barreto. Detective Juan Declet Barreto. I've been working the Danger Season Squad going on nine years now. This city has changed. It was always hot, but not this hot. The first time I stepped out of that wobbly city bus with wings they call a plane and into the Phoenix Airport tarmac, I felt the dual whack of the hot and dry desert city heat right in the kisser. That was 30 years ago. Right now, the city's hotter than a dozen stolen tamales. If I am to investigate this crime scene, I'm going to need an ice-cold martini that never empties, and a shadow darker than my past. Only two things are certain. One, the sweat running down my back like a convict on the lam. And two, this heat was unbound, willfully, like a Kraken, its tendrils scraping through every office, house, school, and playground in the city. Every summer day, all day, wrapping the city and its people in a relentless creep of sweltering suffering that doesn't end up at night. That doesn't jive with the old seasonal patterns in the city of short, hot summers and long, cool winters. Something stinks and I am hot on its trail. Finding out is risky business, and I hope I don't end up on the wrong end of a smoking 38 Special.

JESS V.O.: The capitol of Arizona is no stranger to heat, but this smells fishier than a can of tuna in the sun at noon. It’s not just this city, and it’s not just your normal hot, dry summer. Something bigger is going on, and it’s haunting the Detective.

JUAN V.O.: Phoenix is not the only place this killer has struck. The killer left a trail as clear as cigarette smoke in the Duke’s Studio, lingering just long enough for those sharp enough to see it. Just this week, the fingerprints of suffocating heat and high humidity are all over Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, Houston, and Boston. Heck, from the newspaper this morning, looks like the killer took a tropical vacation down to San Juan as well.

Sleep was hard to catch in the scorching night. Woke up in the middle of the night to a vexing self-interrogation, "Who released this climatic abomination?" A few months ago, I swiped the climate deception dossier when the Commish wasn't looking. I knew the score. Carbon emissions released by the kingpins of Big Oil. I'll bet my last peso they got a hand in this, and the fossil fuel weasels on their payroll are pushing the hydrocarbon hooch all across town.

In this racket, it's all about the grease and the gears. They all got a price, and loyalty is just another word for until the check clears. It's a racket through and through. I've gotta blow this scene and meet that newshound from the UCS rag.

SCENE 5 – INT. NEWSPAPER OFFICE – NIGHT

JESS V.O.: My editor is breathing down my neck to break this story and the crimes are piling up like flies on a corpse. The Danger Season gumshoes agreed to come to my office. Less chance any stool pigeons will overhear and rat us out to mob…or the crooked cops in bed with the thugs. I thought this would be a quiet night at the office but I was dead wrong…

JESS: What’ve ya got for me, Detectives?

CARLY: This was no accident. All this evidence points straight at Big Oil and their whole fossil fuel gang.

JESS: How about you, Detective Declet-Barreto? Any luck?

JUAN: The kingpins have lied to the public for years about what they knew and when they knew it. Selling those fossil fuels as fast as they could while covering up the science. It's criminal, plain and simple.

JESS V.O.: I couldn’t believe my ears. They had cold, hard evidence. This wasn’t just big. It was huge. Gigantic, even.

JESS: So why haven’t the Feds stepped in and put a stop to all this?

CARLY: Someone’s squeezing the Feds.

JUAN: There's something rotten in the system but we can't get a go-ahead to arrest these goons.

CARLY: This has to make the front page. The public deserves to know. These here are crimes against humanity. Ecocide, even.

JESS V.O.: Ecocide is a serious charge. The Detectives have a whole dossier full of evidence proving Big Oil and the Fossil Fuel Weasels knew exactly what price the country would have to pay for their greed…and we ain’t talkin’ money.

JESS: Going up against the mob takes guts. Are you two sure this is solid? If we lay an egg on this, all our necks are on the line.

CARLY: Look, I'm gonna give it to you straight. This is way bigger than just one of us. Sure, there are things we can do to protect ourselves, protect the lungs of our children, protect our own personal property. But if we really want to get to the crux of the issue, we gotta take the fight to them. We have to let justice run its course.

JESS: The sleuth has a point. What about you, snooper?

JUAN: Your average Jane or Joe Schmo can't stop flooding by themselves any more than they can catch a fistful of rain. Just trying to get through the downpour without drowning into the deluge. But they can help spread the word about the culprits. They gotta pressure the government to do something before it's too late. They gotta speak up, and they gotta make sure the government listens to the science and the evidence. Plus they gotta get the government to go after the kingpins of Big Oil and dismantle the Fossil Fuel Weasels gang that does their dirty work.

JESS: I’m sold, so let’s get this out to the public. Every human being oughta be outraged that these Big Oil criminals are gettin’ away with murder.

SCENE 6 – NEWSPAPER STAND – MORNING

JESS: The case looked aces, so I decided to run the story. The Danger Season Detectives left after they finished giving me the low down, so I took few nips from the old flask to borrow some courage and got to work. If the Feds are gumming the works because the mob’s too powerful, well the only answer is to plaster the truth all over the broadsheets. Every tabloid in the nation is gonna pick this up, and that’s the best gamble we’ve got.

This morning, the world’s gonna see it above the fold: “Climate Killers Unmasked! Big Oil Hides Dirty Deeds In Plain Sight.” I may have a bullseye on my back now, but I’m packing heat and I know the Danger Season Squad’s got my back. Good thing too, since after all Danger Season is only just beginning…

Thanks so much to Dr. Juan Declet-Barreto and Dr. Carly Phillips for playing along with my noir concept. Huge thanks to Chris Bliss for brainstorming the idea with me, and to Nick Iannaco for creating the stunning graphic novel version of this episode that you can see at sciencewithjess.org. Thanks to Omari Spears for production help. I’d like to give a huge thank you to our outgoing Multimedia Production Intern Josephine Spanier. Josie helped write this episode, and she has produced all of our recent videos. In addition to that, she created our new TikTok account and has been helping us reach more people there and on Instagram and Facebook. Josie, we appreciate your contributions to This Is Science tremendously, and we wish you all the success in the world during your senior year of college and beyond!

Keep on pounding the pavement, science detectives!