INTERVIEW: Rick Piltz

Rick Piltz, Founder and Director of Climate Science Watch. Piltz, is a former senior associate in the Climate Change Science Program.

He worked for a decade for the U.S. federal government’s climate research program. He has been described the American Prospect as "an insider who coordinated the editing of many [climate change] program documents".

Piltz resigned in March, charging that White House politics has undermined the credibility and integrity of the program.

Rick Piltz talks about where the strategy of creating uncertainty as to the science on global warming originated.

Rick Piltz: I think this is a strategy that dates back. Actually it dates back to the tobacco industry and the smoking health effects, but, if you bring it forward into the nineteen nineties, there's a strategy that was developed by a range of political operatives in the industry and in these advocacy groups to hold off regulation, to hold off pressure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, by pursuing a strategy of manufacturing an enhanced sense of uncertainty about global warming, and that's what they've done.

And, even though they've ended up promoting a position that's far outside the mainstream of the science community, they've kind of, so far, won politically in that they have completely tied the hands of getting anything done about the global warming problem.

Bob McKeown: IN THE SAME WAY, AS YOU POINT OUT, IN THE SAME WAY THAT THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY CAST DOUBT ON, ON MEDICAL RESEARCH -

Rick Piltz: For decades -

Bob McKeown: ABOUT THE LINK BETWEEN SECOND HAND SMOKE AND CIGARETTES FOR NOW -

Rick Piltz: For decades. Yeah, for decades, and um -

Bob McKeown: AND PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF IT?

Rick Piltz: In the case of smoking? Certainly, of course, in very large numbers.

Bob McKeown: JUST GOING ALONG THAT LINE OF ARGUMENT, DOES, NOT TO BE CAVALIER ABOUT IT, BUT DOES IT OCCUR TO YOU THAT JUST AS PEOPLE DIED, ARGUABLY BECAUSE THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY CAST DOUBT ON THE MEDICAL LINK BETWEEN CIGARETTES AND CANCER, FOR SO LONG, WHEN YOU LOOK FIFTY YEARS IN THE FUTURE, ARE WE TALKING ABOUT GREATER STAKES THAN THAT?

Rick Piltz: Well, I mean as a number of the leading scientists, Jim Hanson, announced, and others will tell you, people who know climate science much better than I, if we go along for another fifty years, and actually less than fifty years, and do absolutely nothing to alter the trajectory we're on with global, economic development and the way it uses energy, we are very likely to be facing consequences for a sea level rise, extreme weather events, shifting of agriculture, shifting of water resources that are going to be very disruptive to civilization, the public health impacts…