Should We Censor Communication—Whether in Movie-Making or Renewable Energy?

For the first time in the history of Hollywood, filmdom is caught in a no-win situation: if Sony Pictures airs its movie exposing the insane brutality of the Kim Jong Un regime, it’s a near certainty that North Korea is more than crazy enough to kill innocent Americans—probably an enormous number of them.  I chose the picture for this post specifically for those who may be wondering if the regime is, in fact, sufficiently deranged; it features a few of the 80 Koreans who were executed by firing squad one recent afternoon for watching foreign films.  Thus Sony’s conundrum: releasing the film results in death; not releasing it endorses and encourages censorship—imposed first from the criminally insane—but what next?

Speaking of censorship, but on a completely different scale, for the first time in the history of 2GreenEnergy I told someone just last night that I wanted to sever dialog.  There’s nothing criminally insane about this guy whatsoever.  He’s just an abusive waste of time.

I don’t mind abuse, i.e., being on the receiving end of personal abuse, as I’ve shown hundreds of times here through the last six years.  And I also don’t mind people who are human incarnations of the phrase “waste of time”; I like to think I’ve shown great patience here as well.  But the two in combination proved too much for me.

At issue was a never-ceasing effort on the gentleman’s part to explain why nuclear is the only valid energy source, and, in particular, that wind is a hoax perpetrated only to make money for the industry insiders.  The discussion began with a series of posts I wrote in response to his emails in which I pointed out that there was a role for both nuclear and wind/solar.  E.g., this piece on land use for various energy resources, this post of the validity of both nuclear and wind, and this very pro-nuclear article.

Yet, after all this conversation, I received the following (and so did a following of others on the “cc” line), which, as you’ll see, went beyond the pale for me.

Reader:  (Presents an elaborate argument against wind, then continues…)  Craig, why are you so resistant to facts of science & engineering?…..Wind has never been a viable option for powering states, countries or the world…..So what are you trying to accomplish here, Craig?  Are you pushing wind for personal gain?

Craig:  Holy mackerel.

No, I’m not pushing wind–or anything else–for personal gain.  I’ve published over a million words on the subject, almost all of them based on interviews with many hundreds of people from different disciplines including math, economics, physics and engineering, and I’ve never gotten a dime for taking one position vs. another.

I really don’t want to continue this childish shouting match.  I just want to calmly go away.  Unless you’re some sort of online bully/stalker/freak, you’ll find that a reasonable request.

You hold a position that opposes the vast majority of findings in the field, not unlike the historians who disbelieve in the Holocaust.   That doesn’t make you/them wrong, just very hard for most people to believe.  Holding a minority viewpoint isn’t the problem, rather, it’s mindlessly accusing the huge majority of scientists whose lives have been spent studying the subject of academic dishonesty and corruption.

In saying goodbye, let me add this, and I mean it sincerely: good luck. I very much hope that nuclear can be made cost-effective and safe; in fact, in its absence, I think our civilization is headed for a terrible catastrophe.