David Burton has a BS in Systems Science from Michigan State University, and an MA in Computer Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin.

He is a Board Member of NC-20, and one of the organization's Science Advisors. In 2011 he wrote a comprehensive critique of the Coastal Resource Commission's 2010 North Carolina Sea-Level Rise Assessment Report, identifying numerous serious errors in that document, and the following year wrote this paper, in the journal Natural Hazards: doi:10.1007/s11069-012-0159-8. He is or was also a member of the NC Sea Level Rise Impact Study Advisory Committee, a member of the NC Portal Project Review Committee, a U.N. IPCC AR5 WG1 Expert Reviewer, and webmaster of the sealevel.info web site.

David is the owner of Burton Systems Software in Cary, North Carolina.