House of Eratosthenes

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.

More here.

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.

I’m sure we’ll be told this doesn’t prove or disprove a single thing. And indeed it doesn’t…except for one thing:

There is a lot of empty political posturing on the Chicken Little side of this so-called “debate.”

The last, and perhaps most important, of my 42 definitions of a strong society is that nobody ever talks about the world ending, for any reason. Chatter about Armageddon is about as old as recorded human history itself, and it’s unhealthy. It is both a symptom and a cause. It shows people don’t feel sufficiently important just living out their lives, doing what they do. In order to matter, they need to exist at the terminus of something.

And once they start to think in these terms, they start to invest their identities in it. It’s like a twisted form of immortality. Oh, look at me…yeah, my headstone will have a date on it after the dash, but it won’t be any earlier than anybody else’s.

And then they start to skimp on their everyday efforts. Avatar is a good example of what I’m talking about, actually. Awesome exterior shots, yet another major revolution in CGI, the scenery, the colors, the creatures, the camera angles…just an amazing achievement in film-making…every single frame out of the entire roll, just chosen at random, once viewed in all its glory completely takes your breath away…

The story stunk on ice. Very few people have anything good to say about that part of it.

James Cameron wants to be in charge of building the last really profitable movie the human race ever sees. That’s what I think, because while the man definitely has a lot of talent at what he does, nobody is putting his works alongside the works of DeMille, Hitchcock or Spielberg.

Even Cameron wouldn’t be up for a comparison like that.

Oh well, maybe he would, but he’d cancel at the last possible second. Har! Hey, I couldn’t resist that one. Can ya blame me?

Existing in the middle of something can be a terrifying thought. That is what global warming is all about; some among us just aren’t up for it. You’re born, you live, you die, there were people born before you were born and there will be people living on after you’re gone.

I do not pretend to understand this. To put out as many feature films as Cameron has, that have generated, what, ten digits of income worldwide? That’s what single-digit billions is, right, ten? He has accomplished something very impressive and should feel proud. Just as, being our nation’s Vice President for two terms, along with the other things Al Gore has done…these are things that should make someone feel complete, to say the very least.

Well these men and others like them are not feeling complete. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way a psychosis works. They’re suffering from feelings of inadequacy that can never be mollified. Not unless they’re still in their seats watching the closing credits, when it all goes dark. They weren’t born early enough to see the beginning, but they’re gonna watch the ending — that’s the dream.

I’ve got a feeling that if James Cameron can ever resign himself to the terrifying reality that he’s living in the middle of something, and is going to be a figment of history someday, maybe after that reckoning he’ll put out a movie I actually want to add to my collection. And then put in my DVD player and watch. A few times. This, to date, is something he has not yet done. And maybe it’s self-centered for me to think this, but I believe this is the current inadequacy upon which his energies would be more properly focused.

My guess is that as Mr. Cameron prepared for his debate, he actually started learning that there really is a debate, and that he’s been lied to. All the cards are not on the side of the Chicken Littles. Some very high value cards, are, in fact, on the other side, and they are difficult to beat. Of course, most Liberals are Liberals out of a false sense of superiority, which means they hate to lose face. So he tried slapping condition after condition on the opposition to try to get them to pull out so that he could say he won by default.

When that didn’t happen, he had no choice but to have a debate that he felt he really couldn’t win, or to try to quietly cancel it.
- philmon | 08/24/2010 @ 09:16
This is the only reason they’re worth watching…well, this, and the very real possibility they might still win and make life a whole lot more expensive.

They are a “diverse” sloppy hodge-podge of people doing the fooling and people getting fooled. So every nut out of the cashew tin, you don’t know which kind it is.

You discuss it with them to find out, and all you can really learn is that you’re hateful, bigoted, Islamophobic, sexist, racist, illiterate, xenophobic, snips snails & puppy dogs’ tails. Meanwhile, the mish-mash of agenda driven hyperliberals and Aunt Sallies continues rolling down the mountain smashing everything in its path, pretending to be engaged in a process of creation & preservation while it really exists only to destroy.

It’s a fascinating human weakness. We won’t be able to document it in any formalized way until such time as it’s exterminated, and I’m afraid it will always be around. But as long as it’s around, it’s all the more important to document it somewhere. This is what blogs are for.
- mkfreeberg | 08/24/2010 @ 09:27
This was hilarious. It is interesting that Cameron’s opponents appear to have so completely anticipated him, and followed his retreat into every corner without hesitation.
- jamzw | 08/25/2010 @ 09:18

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“From the King of the World to the Chicken of the Sea”
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010