Seasons of Discontent
by Brandon Keim

Though the heavy, humid breath of summer still soaks this early August evening, autumn in past weeks has whispered several times — a cooling rain, a crisp breeze — and the hastened encroachment of night is now perceptible.

Until recently, this would have foreshadowed a change in seasons. But it is no longer reasonable to expect that summer will accede to fall in the graciously predictable manner it has for most of our lives. Here in Boston, the past four years have accustomed us to waves of strange summer-like heat in October and November, pleasant at first but soon unnerving, perversely symmetrical with our suddenly cold springs. Summer lurches into winter, and vice versa, and lost are the subtle and delicate seasons between.

Such is the reality of climate change where I live. The particulars vary from region to region, but not the story. The evidence is right there when we open a window or pick up a newspaper. Far more predictable than the weather itself now are reports of its extremes; hardly a week passes without reports of a season warmer than any in recorded meteorological history, or colder, of endless droughts or freak floods or subcontinent-sized pollution clouds. The world's weather is seriously off kilter — and according to the overwhelming majority of our planet's climate scientists, it's only going to get crazier.

A similar majority of our climate scientists have attributed these changes to an excess of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. Rather less of a consensus exists about the degree to which emissions are responsible for climate change, and whether it can be halted; but of the change itself, and the fact that burning incomprehensibly vast amounts of oil and gas and coal every day has consequences, few skeptics remain.

Nevertheless, many reasonable people still insist that the climate change debate has hardly advanced in the last decade. The jury, they say, is still out; for every scientist who says one thing about the weather, another says the opposite. And it is true that there remain scientists who profess to doubt that climate change exists, or that fossil fuels have anything to do with it. But their lingering influence, and that of the
policymakers who invoke them, has less to do with credible arguments than with the incredible efforts of the fossil fuel industry to prevent the public from realizing what is happening.

In its campaign to manufacture uncertainty, the fossil fuel industry has used the same strategy as Big Tobacco, funding the work of scientists whose findings just coincidentally happen to fit their bottom lines, then promoting the results through industry-supported front groups intended to give the impression of impartiality and old-fashioned civic concern. That some people believe these scientists, or at least believe their findings were made in good faith, is a testament to the fossil fuel industry’s success in hiding — and the mainstream news media’s failure to reveal — gross conflicts of interest.

Conflicts of interest, specifically those which occur when researchers or institutions have a financial stake in the results of supposedly disinterested inquiry, are a major subject of this issue of GeneWatch. Sheldon Krimsky discusses precisely what constitutes conflicts of interest, and how they can compromise not only scientific integrity, but human health. Naturally one wonders what can be done to prevent this; Sam Lipson describes the extraordinary steps taken by Cambridge, Massachusetts to ensure community oversight of biotechnology research, creating a system which benefits both the public and the industry, and providing a model which other communities can adopt. Finally, Suman Sahai and Shakeelur Rahman examine the results of the first genetically modified cotton crops in India.

At a moment of unprecedented corporate power, with science occupying as central a role as it ever has in Western society, studying the relationships between science and private influence is simply a matter of common sense — and, at times, of survival. Turn on the fan and pour some iced tea — or, depending on our oil-drunk weather, turn on the heater and pour some hot cocoa — and enjoy.