“Is it time to stop making the hottest part of the year seem cool?” asks an article in the climate-focused publication Grist, the self-described “only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice.” Per Grist’s headline, “Summer has transformed into ‘danger season,’ scientists warn.” Summer may be just beginning in reality, but in Grist’s world, it’s canceled: “Around the year 900, Old English speakers were already using the word sumor for the warmer months. […] But summer isn’t what it used to be. The season is getting so hot that it might be time for a new name: ‘danger season.’”

Six-dollar gas seems to have convinced the Biden administration to stop nixing pipelines and start begging oil companies and Saudi princes to produce more fuel, but the underlying idea in organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, where the “danger season” idea originated, remains that we just need more people to make better choices. That’s the point of this absurd, dead-on-arrival attempt to toy with the word for one of the four seasons. As Grist explains, “Part of the thinking behind using the phrase ‘danger season’ is to make it harder for people to sugar-coat the climate crisis.” It goes on to quote someone who runs George Mason University’s “Center for Climate Change Communication,” an institute that focuses on the language of the science, not the science itself.