Cameron backs out. So much for that attempt to sink skeptical arguments.
From King of the World to Chicken of the Sea: Director James Cameron challenges climate skeptics to debate and then bails out at last minute
Via the SPPI Blog, Source: Climatedepot
Hide the Debate: Cameron ducks Climate Debate with Breitbart, Morano, & McElhinney
by Marc Morano
ASPEN COLORADO: Hollywood director James Cameron challenged three high profile global warming skeptics to a public debate at a global warming and energy conference. But Cameron backed out of the debate at the last minute after environmentalists “came out of the woodwork” to warn him not to engage in a debate with skeptics because it was not in his best interest.
Cameron challenged Andrew Breitbart, Climate Depot’s Marc Morano and filmmaker Ann McElhinney of ‘Not Evil Just Wrong.’ The debate was already in the program for the Aspen American Renewable Energy Day (AREDAY) summit. The website program described the agreed to debate as “AREDAY Climate Change Debate: Reality or Fiction?” (see image below)
After setting up the public global warming debate, Cameron and his negotiator then changed formats multiple times and initially said it would be open to the media and then said he would only participate if it was private with no recording devices. The skeptics agreed to all the changes. According to AREDAY organizers, activist Joseph Romm of Climate Progress urged Cameron not to go ahead with the debate as well.
Cameron’s cancellation of the agreed to debate did not happen until one debate participant (Morano) was already in mid-air, flying from DC to Aspen on Saturday August 21 to attend the debate. (AREDAY did grant Morano a 90 minute slot to speak at the summit. See: Climate Depot’s Presentation at Warmists’ Summit Met By Hostile Interrupting Moderator and Crowd; Call for Morano to Kill Himself!)
(Morano Note: After ducking debate, James Cameron boldly slammed global warming skeptics as “swine” on the day he was supposed to be debating them. “I think they’re swine” Cameron told a friendly audience at the AREDAY summit. Also see: Cameron Morphs Into Gore, Quits AGW Debate: ‘Chickened out–even after he won Gore-like concessions that there would be no media and no audio or video record kept’ — How does Cameron square ducking a climate debate he set up when just a few months ago he seemed so confident? See: Director James Cameron Unleashed: Calls for gun fight with global warming skeptics: ‘I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads’)
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Below is detailed report from Ann McElhinney of www.NotEvilJustWrong.com on how Cameron ducked out of debate he set up.
James Cameron—King of Hypocrites
Written by Ann McElhinney
Sunday, 22 August 2010 17:49
Last March James Cameron sounded defiant.
The Avatar director was determined to expose journalists, such as myself, who thought it was important to ask questions about climate change orthodoxy and the radical “solutions” being proposed.
Cameron said was itching to debate the issue and show skeptical journalists and scientists that they were wrong.
“I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads,” he said in an interview.
Well, a few weeks ago Mr. Cameron seemed to honor his word.
His representatives contacted myself and two other well known skeptics, Marc Morano of the Climate Depot website and Andrew Breitbart, the new media entrepreneur.
Mr. Cameron was attending the AREDAY environmental conference in Aspen Colorado 19-22 August. He wanted the conference to end with a debate on climate change. Cameron would be flanked with two scientists. It would be 90 minutes long. It would be streamed live on the internet.
They hoped the debate would attract a lot of media coverage.
“We are delighted to have Fox News, Newsmax, The Washington Times and anyone else you’d like. The more the better,” one of James Cameron’s organizers said in an email.
It looked like James Cameron really was a man of his word who would get to take on the skeptics he felt were so endangering humanity.
Everyone on our side agreed with their conditions. The debate was even listed on the AREDAY agenda.
But then as the debate approached James Cameron’s side started changing the rules.
They wanted to change their team. We agreed.
They wanted to change the format to less of a debate—to “a roundtable”. We agreed.
Then they wanted to ban our cameras from the debate. We could have access to their footage. We agreed.
Bizarrely, for a brief while, the worlds most successful film maker suggested that no cameras should be allowed-that sound only should be recorded. We agreed
Then finally James Cameron, who so publicly announced that he “wanted to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out,” decided to ban the media from the shoot out.
He even wanted to ban the public. The debate/roundtable would only be open to those who attended the conference.
No media would be allowed and there would be no streaming on the internet. No one would be allowed to record it in any way.
We all agreed to that.
And then, yesterday, just one day before the debate, his representatives sent an email that Mr. “shoot it out ” Cameron no longer wanted to take part. The debate was cancelled.
James Cameron’s behavior raises some very important questions.
Does he genuinely believe in man made climate change? If he believes it is a danger to humanity surely he should be debating the issue every chance he gets ?
Or is it just a pose?
The man who called for an open and public debate at “high noon” suddenly doesn’t want his policies open to serious scrutiny.
I was looking forward to debating with the film maker. I was looking forward to finding out where we agreed and disagreed and finding a way forward that would help the poorest people in the developing and developed world.
But that is not going to happen because somewhere along the way James Cameron, a great film maker, has moved from King of the World to being King of the Hypocrites.
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Addendum
In other news from the SPPI Blog
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Climate Depot’s Presentation at Warmists’ Summit Met By Hostile Interrupting Moderator and Crowd; Call for Morano to Kill Himself!
Source: Climatedepot
Global Warming Summit’s Warm Welcome: Morano told to drive car into garage with engine running and then close the doors
By Marc Morano
[SPPI Note: This is the same arrogant and hapless Joe Romm who claimed that global warming cause the collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis in August of 2007. For other entries on Romm see here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/commentaries/climate_mccarthyism.pdf
and here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/blogwatch/climate_inquisition.pdf
and here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/commentaries/romms_fairy_tales.pdf ]
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Note from Climate Depot’s Executive Editor Marc Morano:
My presentation at Aspen American Renewable Energy Day (AREDAY) summit on Sunday August 22, 2010 at 5:30 was met by a rude moderator and hostile audience. I was offered the 90 minute time slot to present the skeptical view of man-made climate change after Hollywood director James Cameron’s cowardly final cancellation of a pre-planned and agreed to global warming debate. See here: From King of the World to Chicken of the Sea: Director James Cameron Sets up Debate with Skeptics Then Flees! Cameron Ducks Climate Debate with Breitbart, Morano, & McElhinney
Cameron’s cancellation of the debate did not happen until I was already in mid-air, flying from DC to Aspen on Saturday August 21 to attend the debate. After challenging us to the public debate, Cameron was spooked by Joseph Romm of Climate Progress who warned him not to debate us. Finally, we were told Cameron would debate us if Romm joined the debate and at Romm’s insistence there would be no cameras or media present. We agreed and I flew to Aspen. (See full report of Cameron’s chickening out here. How does Cameron square ducking a climate debate he set up when just a few months ago he seemed so confident. See: Director James Cameron Unleashed: Calls for gun fight with global warming skeptics: ‘I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads’)
After arriving I found out that Cameron had canceled the debate that he challenged us to. The AREDAY global warming summit organizers then offered me the consolation prize of 90 minutes to speak to the conference and present the skeptical argument with Q and A from the audience. But the 90 minute event turned out to be further evidence of manipulation by Cameron and the ARDAY conference organizers.
My PowerPoint presentation was repeatedly interrupted by ARDAY moderator Richard Greene and the audience was not receptive to me continuing my presentation. Instead, the bulk of my presentation turned into a disjointed moderator and audience rant session. I attempted several times to return to my presentation, but the crowd and moderator refused to cooperate and seemed completely disinterested.
One participant confused carbon dioxide with carbon monoxide. She suggested I kill himself by driving my car into my garage and then close the doors with the engine running. I twice attempted to explain to the ARDAY conference participant that there was a difference between carbon dioxide — a harmless trace essential gas we exhale from our mouth– and toxic carbon monoxide, but to no avail. I sadly shook my head and told the audience: “Wow, what a warm welcome I have gotten here.”
In the end, the ARDAY’s offer of 90 minutes for me to present the skeptical view of man-made global warming after Cameron’s debate cancellation revealed itself to be essentially disingenuous.
So you challenged a guy to a fight, blindfolded him and tied one hand behind his back and STILL ran away?!? Cameron you are a pathetic coward.
Bruce, I have no motives except to tell it like it is. I’m surprised you don’t think Morano has a motive here. He shows up after “he” says the “debate” was “canceled” and was more than happy to give a talk and was smiling the entire time, loving firing up the audience, he gets his name all around the blogosphere and you think this wasn’t orchestrated? I think Morano likely had this planned all along in order to give himself more visibility and publicity. After watching him speak I certainly didn’t walk away thinking the guy was honest in any way.
Bruce, seems you are quick to believe whatever Morano has to say, but you appear closed-minded to listen to another person’s point of view who was actually there. Morano has a political agenda, I do not. I went there to get educated.
Yep.
He had the White House Website scrubbed:
http://bigjournalism.com/wthuston/2010/08/22/obama-scrubs-white-house-website-of-climate-change-promises-media-mum/
Just for my own enlightenment – it doesn’t seem like any of the people on the skeptic side of the debate were scientists. So wouldn’t that place Cameron on the same level?
” jeff brown says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:10 am
I think Morano likely had this planned all along in order to give himself more visibility and publicity.”
So Morano can manipulate this Cameron fellow like a puppet on a string? Make him say “yes, yes, yes, no” and whatever else whenever he wants to?
” jeff brown says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:20 am
Bruce, seems you are quick to believe whatever Morano has to say, but you appear closed-minded to listen to another person’s point of view who was actually there. Morano has a political agenda, I do not. I went there to get educated.”
I would definitely side with Jeff on this. Having seen Morano appear on television a couple of times my opinion of him is not a positive one. He has been loud and rudely overbearing and seems to enjoy taunting his opponents rather than simply engaging with them. From Cameron’s comments about skeptics being ‘swine’, perhaps this was to be a match made in heaven. I’m glad it was called off.
>>Avatar was a wonderful film, made by a gutless wonder. Who knew?
‘Avatar’ was ‘Dances With Wolves’ in space, and disgracefully anti American too.
Two ‘crimes’ in one film – plagiarism and traitorism – not bad. Had Cameron been a citizen of many other regimes around the world, he would have been thrown in the slammer for such a disgraceful film.
.
Ralph
Cameron is Canadian. The Canadians are left-leaning, so…
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jeff brown ,
In your above quote, I think the use of the words ‘belief’ or ‘believe’ are inappropriate when used in the context of a scientific dialog on climate or any other subject matter of science. I think it is at the crux of the ongoing dialog between the so-called consensus climate science community and those independent of it.
In the context of your quote:
I offer this understanding of mine:
The situation now stands as a overdramatic interaction of consensus and independents.
It is overdramatic due to involvement of beliefs. From now on, it would be good to abandon beliefs. We need open discussion on any open forum that is available. Beliefs mentioned in that open discussion can be weeded out mercilessly and persistently. A direct consequent of having no beliefs involved is no more seclusion of data or code or methods for publically funded climate science papers published in science journals.
On another note, I recommend we leave the kind of discussion where somebody says Morano-said-this and somebody else says no-Morano-said-that. Proof will only be in the live video in unedited form. Until that shows up then there is nothing left to say.
John
“”” jeff brown says:
August 23, 2010 at 10:48 pm
George, really? Is that all you can find to complain about, a spelling typo? Seems you could do more useful things with your time than that. “””
Who’s complaining ? We all make typos; I do it all the time. Mostly it is a physical keyboard dylsexia where my fingers flip pairs of letters including the space bar. I normally go back and edit, to remove them but sometimes I don’t catch them all.
But it stretches one’s credulity to believe it’s a typo, when you repeat the exact same incorrect spelling even in a longer post where you used the name more than a handful of times. You say you went to the meeting; I don’t doubt that; never did.
But why would anybody bother to go to any meeting, where they didn’t even know who the speaker was, to the degree they could spell the name correctly.
We never comment on typos here or typically anywhere on the web. It is part of the culture that people writing open kimono, will make misteaks, so we let them slide.
Dr Richard Lederer, the world’s foremost authority on the English Language (American) routinely uses misspellings in his writings, as a figure of speech; often replacing a word with a differently spelled word that sounds the same, and also has a quite different meaning; usually for comedic effect. In a recent letter to me he wrote the word “cymbalism” instead of “symbolism”, because the comment was of a musical nature.
I often deliberately spell words incorrectly simply to break the monotony, or arrest a reader’s attention.
But then there is this new pernicious habit when commenting about rivals/enemies/opponents and the like to deliberately spell the name incorrectly, to divert search engines; in the belief that any comment about someone in disfavor, is still a comment that can be discovered by searches. Such as the brillinat folks over at RC routinely do with WUWT.
If you went to a Marc Morano lecture in the belief that you were going to learn some new climate science; something of his own research, rather than a report on what somebody else had reported; then you went to the wrong lecture. He is a reporter; and all he does is uncover things others have written or said, and makes them available to a wider audience. If you want to criticize that; criticize the authors of the stories he finds. Shooting the messenger is not an effective strategy.
The reporters who “leaked” the so-called Pentagon Papers became National heroes. Nobody even remembers what the blazes those papers were about.
Well Cameron’s spokesperson; whoever that is, says that Cameron should only be debating persons who are of equivalent stature to him in society.
So clearly the debate was not going to be about science; but more about social status. Well lah-de-dah !
You will discover i think that the warmists have commenced a very successful tactic in their defence of their position. It is referred to as “Totschweigtaktik” which is German for “death by silence”. In the 1930’s It was used by the left leaning literati to attempt to deny oxygen to George Orwell’s crittique of Stalinist intervention in Spain “homage to Catalonia” and is being applied to Dr Bob Carter in Australia. They will refuse to engage in debate by saying that “there is no debate” it is as if serious scientists are debating creationism. I know it sounds a little paranoid and when some opinion is not published the complaints may sound like whingeing and whining and in that lies the strength of the tactic. for interesting reading may i recomend http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2010/7-8/death-by-silence-in-the-writers-combat-zone
and
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/03/abc-gags-bob-carter
George E. Smith: August 24, 2010 at 11:18 am
Well Cameron’s spokesperson; whoever that is, says that Cameron should only be debating persons who are of equivalent stature to him in society.
Is there an equivalent phrase for “noblesse oblige” when referring to a pipsqueak blowhard…?
“Well Cameron’s spokesperson; whoever that is, says that Cameron should only be debating persons who are of equivalent stature to him in society.”
No fair! Why should WUWT readers have to wait for Cameron to get up to our stature before he is allowed to debate us?
““I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads,” he said in an interview.”
Mr. Cameron realized that it’s not a good idea to bring a butter knife to a gunfight.
jeff brown says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:20 am
Bruce, seems you are quick to believe whatever Morano has to say, but you appear closed-minded to listen to another person’s point of view who was actually there. Morano has a political agenda, I do not. I went there to get educated.
First, I wasn’t even there, so how would I know what Marc Marano said. Secondly, unlike you Warmists, I’m not apt to simply believe anything someone says based on who they are, or what credentials they might have. You say Marc Morano “has a political agenda”. Perhaps so. I would say that that “agenda” involves fighting what has become probably the biggest lie in the history of mankind, i.e. that a benign, entirely beneficial gas has been made enemy number 1, for various reasons, be they political, economic, job security, self-aggrandizement, etc. etc. The Warmist side has used politics from Day 1 on this issue in order better to support what has turned out to be incredibly weak science. Now when those who are pushing back, (and very successfully I might add) use politics, this is somehow considered foul play. Their hypocrisy indeed knows no bounds.
I still say that your view of what transpired is one-sided. I would want to hear what Marc has to say as well. In the end, we will never really know, though, without actual video footage. People’s agendas do have a way of coloring their memory.
Shub Niggurath says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:22 am
Ralph
Cameron is Canadian. The Canadians are left-leaning, so…
Be careful about such assupmtions. I’m Canadian and am defininately not left leaning, nor are many others, particularily out west. Although a minority, we currently have a Conservative government in Ottawa. If you don’t know your facts you should keep comments such as those to yourself. I personally don’t care that Cameron is a Canadian. Anyone who calls somebody out, then runs, is a punk. It doesn’t matter where they are from.
Cameron makes fantastic movies, but should really leave climate change to “the experts”, like Dr. James “thumb on the temperature scale” Hansen, and Michael “I reconstructed the entire world’s temperature using one pine tree proxy in the Yamal Penninsula” Mann.
“”” George E. Smith says:
August 24, 2010 at 11:18 am
Well Cameron’s spokesperson; whoever that is, says that Cameron should only be debating persons who are of equivalent stature to him in society.
So clearly the debate was not going to be about science; but more about social status. Well lah-de-dah ! “””
I have Marc Morano’s comment on what happened; from which I extracted the above information. I’m sure Anthony has it too, so if he wants to put out something from it he can.
Stu, have a look at this video, in which Marc Morano was treated to utter rudeness by both the moderator and Andrew Watson, is given less than half the speaking time as Watson, and who is finally called an A**hole by Watson. Despite that treatment, Marc remains remarkably calm, even cheery, no doubt somewhat amused by their antics and desperation to keep him from speaking:
I have no doubt that he is a lightning rod for Warmist hatred of the truth, and for anyone who dares speak it. He has to be made of strong stuff, and is to be admired. They don’t call this “climate wars” for nothing.
Chris Thorne says (August 23, 2010 at 7:35 pm): “We can reasonably suppose that a lobster with tits would not have put as many butts in seats for his profoundly silly movie. Nope, bring on the scientifically senseless hot blue chick.”
Heh. IMHO the maker of “Titanic” really “missed the boat” on this one. If you have to make the “aliens” look hot for the box office, why not make a virtue of necessity and incorporate that into the plot? The Na’vi look human-ish because–surprise!–they are! Pandora looks like a Disney Adventureland theme park because–surprise!–it is! Over the course of the movie our intrepid heroes gradually discover that ancient star-faring aliens (who look like lobsters) engineered life forms from many star systems, including our own, to create a global amusement park they experience by proxy, i.e. through–surprise!–avatars. It even explains why Pandora is (apparently) the only significant source of Um (unobtainium) in two star systems: Cameron–er, I mean the aliens, wink wink–put it there as part of the global park’s biological computer control system. The “park” was abandoned millenia ago when the galactic real estate bubble collapsed and the tourists stopped coming. 🙂
Now if I can only figure out how to include lots of explosions and a high body count, because, God knows, Hollywood hasn’t given us enough of those…
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Sad, I thought he was better than that, I can only assume that the AGW reptiles sucked his brain out and left a shell they could manipulate to their will.
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You just insulted reptiles. If they could think, they would know AGW isn’t happening, because they still have to warm themselves up with solar heat before looking for food!
Signed AGW skeptic & reptile owner
So you missed Al Gore’s movie and talks?
But warmists don’t stick to CO2-science either. They cite the consensus and say or imply that skeptics are junk-science pseudoscientists. That material is a large part of “the actual debate.” Therefore Morano’s points were “in order” as rebuttals; and thus his audience’s annoyance was disingenuous.
George E. Smith says:
>Lobsters are even smart enough to back up when they run into trouble, instead of charging forward into oblivion; so they likely will outlast us.
George – Lobsters have made that cardinal evolutionary sin : being delicious