Verrry curious. The excuse, I’m sure, will be that he didn’t want to “legitimize” skeptics by sharing a stage with them. But (a) it’s odd that that didn’t occur to him when he agreed to the debate initially, promising to “call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads,” and (b) given the sliding support for global-warming legislation in the western world, he’s almost uniquely positioned to turn the tide. If you want to convince Joe Public that skeptics are cranks, what better way than for the tool who directed “Avatar” to thrash them at a public debate? The media’s dying to see it happen, I promise. Why, we might even get MSNBC to interrupt live coverage.

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…

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.

A real shame. Would have been fun to watch the reaction to him calling skeptics “swine” to their faces, for once. Exit question: Forgive and forget? C’mon — he has important things to do this week!