Cameron
And then to make matters worse, refers to sceptics as “swine” as a parting shot. Nice.
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?”
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. (source)
Also check out Ann McElhinney’s account here.
If you don’t turn up, you lose.
Australian Climate Madness 
cameron’s spokesman is now saying that cameron would only debate someone who’s stature in the world community is equal to cameron’s.
I’m pretty sure Herve Villachez (sp) died some years ago. (Boss! Boss! Da plane….)
“If you don’t turn up, you lose.”
Yes, well that’s the “normal” format. But we are dealing with people in a bizaro world who will believe that not turning up is a win for them.
By way of example, after the pathetic turnout for the “wank against warming” we are told of a successful campaign and that people are showing they want decisive and immediate action on climate change.
Shub is in good form on this one:
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/manbearchicken/
Fascinating insight into the James Cameron debate story, from the emails, here:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/08/24/emails-refute-james-camerons-reason-cancelling-global-warming-debate