Biography of Rick Piltz
Rick Piltz is the Director of Climate Science Watch, a program of the Government Accountability Project in Washington, DC. Initiated in 2005, Climate Science Watch uses investigation, communication, and reform advocacy to carry out its mission of holding public officials accountable for how they use climate science and related research, toward the goal of dealing effectively with the challenge of global climate change and its consequences.
For 10 years Piltz held senior positions in the coordination office of the multiagency program through which the U.S. government supports scientific research and observations on climate and global environmental change. He resigned in protest in March 2005. His subsequent revelations about the Bush administration's politicization of climate science communication, starting with an open letter to the federal program leadership and a front page story in the New York Times, received coverage in the print and electronic media in the United States and abroad.
Since then, Piltz has been interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes, PBS NOW, BBC Panorama, CBC (Canada) fifth estate, and other television and radio programs nationwide and internationally, as well as for numerous newspaper and magazine articles. He testified at Congressional hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in January 2007 and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in February 2007. He appears in the new documentary films Everything's Cool and Out of Balance. He was awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling at the National Press Club in April 2006 and was honored as a free speech defender by the National Coalition Against Censorship in October 2006. The Climate Science Watch Web site (www.climatesciencewatch.org) attracts a growing number of readers from the arenas of government, politics, science, journalism, education, public interest advocacy, and the private sector.
Since moving to Washington, DC, in 1988 Piltz has focused on the interaction of politics, policy, and research related to climate change. As a professional staff member of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology from 1991-1994 he supported the Committee's oversight of climate change and energy technology R&D issues.
Piltz is a native of Detroit, Michigan, was educated at the University of Michigan, and taught political science at the University of Texas at Austin. He has worked on environmental, energy, and science policy issues since the late 1970s, in government and nongovernmental organizations.