"Climate Crimes"

Those who have read this blog for a while know that I periodically make the observation that the pro-catastrophic global warming (CGW) types do not behave like people who are confident they have the scientific arguments on their side.

When those of us who believe humans, on balance, warm the planet in a modest way that will cause mild (net) problems point out issues with the CGW case, they too often, fly into a frenzy. Now, it is "climate crimes." This from a science "journalist:"

Donald Brown, the philosopher at Penn State who has been writing about the ethics of climate change for well over a decade -- I interviewed him in the early 2000s -- thinks they are perhaps guilty of crimes against humanity. 

Are they? Are Anthony Watts and Marc Morano and Tom Nelson and Steve Goddard smart enough to be guilty of climate crimes?

I think so. You can't simply claim that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas. 

I think they're crimes will be obvious in about a decade.

When I profiled Michael Mann for Scientific American, he said he thought it would eventually be illegal to deny climate change. I had doubts about that, but maybe.

That a "science journalist" would call free speech a "crime" is especially ironic. So much for the First Amendment. So much for basic grammar (it is "their" crimes, not "they're" crimes). For this to engender so much ire to accuse someone of a crime, the person must have said something absurd about rock-solid science, right?

Ahhhh, no.

Our journalist explains:

CharlesH wrote, on 9/10:
>> Sea levels have risen at a ~3mm/yr rate during the last and previous centuries (about 1ft/century) <<

...
In any case, this supposed fact is not true. Sea level has not been 3 mm/yr over the last several centuries. Read the papers (Ted/CharlesH provides no supporting evidence, because he's not the type to care about facts), or.... last week at WHOI, a graduate student talked to us about -- showed us -- some stumps from an ancient forest near Falmouth, MA, on the beach, that was uncovered two years ago in a Nor'easter [and, oh, how I miss those]. 

He drilled into the stumps and has been using the results to reconstruct massive hurricanes that come onshore in Cape Cod over the last millenium. And his answer -- and I asked him this, as did other people there -- was that sea level was rising about 0.5 mm/yr for most of the previous millenium.

So I'd like proof of "CharlesH's" claim that sea level rise was 3 mm/yr for several centuries.  

This "crime" is expressing uncertainty about the rate of sea level rise over centuries??!!

We have one graduate student, one clump of trees, one location, and one graduate student with a hypothesis. Great, that student may be onto something. But for now, it is just a hypothesis.

Doubting a hypothesis about sea level rise is a "crime"??!!

Especially, when the rate of 3 mm a year sea level rise is more or less the oceanographic consensus and that the rate of rise has been slowing in the recent geologic record (see here).

Sadly, there seem to be a lot of science journalists these days who believe their role is advocate rather than journalist. Below is an example of well-done science journalism with a "skeptic" who believes about what I do when it comes to global warming.


Addition 9:13am. Jeff K (comments below) thinks I'm being unfair by posting the info above as if it is somehow unrepresentative of the pro-GW side. Well, here is what another pro-CGW type said about the video posted above.

It may seem needlessly cruel to dissect the hodgepodge of sociopathically distorted rationalizations and dodges in his recent excruciatingly wrong-headed interview on PBS,

I think I'm being kind with these people.