The death penalty
In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW deniers. But before coming to this surprising conclusion, please allow me to explain where I am coming from.
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GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik.
They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.
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I don't think that mass murderers of the usual kind, such Breivik, should face the death penalty. Nor do I think tobacco denialists are guilty enough to warrant the death penalty, in spite of the enormous number of deaths that resulted more or less directly from tobacco denialism.
GW is different. With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers. More generally, I propose that we limit the death penalty to people whose actions will with a high probability cause millions of future deaths
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From this example, it is clear that there is a dividing line somewhere between murders for which the death penalty is appropriate and murders for which it is inappropriate.
I am proposing to make that dividing line concrete at about one million people. I wish to claim that it is generally ok to kill someone in order to save one million people. Similarly, the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for GW deniers who are so influential that one million future deaths can with high probability be traced to their personal actions. Please note also that I am only talking about prevention of future deaths - not punishment or revenge after the event.
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What about holocaust deniers? The Nazi holocaust was the worst crime in human history, for two reasons: the enormous number of murdered people and the automation of the murder process. Those who deny the holocaust certainly belong behind bars. The death penalty would be too much for them, because holocaust deniers are not directly causing the deaths of other people. The holocaust is in the past, not the future. Those who died in the holocaust cannot be brought back to life.