"Remembering Rick Piltz, Who Fought Government Suppression of Science"

[deurbano]

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/?p=7153&preview=true

BY ALLEEN BROWN

<<Rick Piltz, a climate change whistleblower, died this weekend of cancer.

Piltz revealed in 2005 that the Bush administration was revising supposedly scientific reports to cast doubt on the existence of human-caused climate change. He leaked copies of the edited documents to The New York Times, after resigning from his job as a senior associate for the U.S. government’s Global Change Research Office.

Piltz’s move not only drew attention to Bush’s intentional suppression of scientific fact, but also to the administration’s dubious hiring practices. Less than a week after the story was published, the official who made the edits, Philip A. Cooney, announced he would resign as chief of staff for the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House to return to his former role as a lobbyist for the petroleum industry.

Cooney’s edits downplayed startling predictions for a warming planet. In a document titled “Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program,” he crossed off a section that described the “serious impacts” native people would soon face as melted glacial ice disrupted sustenance hunting and fishing. The final report instead said blandly, “Warming could also lead to changes in the water cycle in polar regions.”...>>