This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.

1. Movie director James Cameron issues a debate challenge, then chickens out

I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads.
-- James Cameron calling for a debated with global warming skeptics

After issuing a debate challenge to global warming skeptics -- as opposed to those who uncritically accept the global warming hypothesis on faith -- and then setting it up, James Cameron ended up completely chickening out. This came after Cameron imposed a barrage of constraints on the terms of debate that he thought would be rejected by the skeptics that he challenged: Marc Morano from Climate Depot, Ann McElhinney of "Not Evil Just Wrong" fame, and Andrew Breitbart.

When the trio of skeptics agreed to all the demands, Cameron turned the tables and dropped out himself. Here is Morano's account of the non-event, and here is McElhinney's.

In February of 2009 the John Locke Foundation co-sponsored a debate on global warming that did take place. It was between former Dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, Dr. William Schlesinger and Alabama State Climatologists and University of Alabama, Huntsville Professor John Christy. Click here to watch this debate in its entirety.

2. Participate in a live discussion on the Gulf oil spill

On September 8 the Foundation for Economics Education will sponsor a discussion with the editor of The Freeman, Sheldon Richman, on this summer's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Sheldon will discuss free energy markets and the perverse incentive structure that currently exists. It will be an online discussion that is open to the public. For more information, go to http://fee.org/event/idea-room-with-sheldon-richman.

3. A blast from the recent past: no global warming since 1995

In light of the hot summer we have been experiencing I thought I'd include this article from last February. Here Phil Jones -- lead IPCC scientist and icon of global warming alarmists everywhere -- admits that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.

4. Ozone Report

For the week of August 15-21, the NC DAQ reports no high ozone readings registered on North Carolina monitors. From April 1 through August 21, a total of 21 weeks, North Carolina has had 96 high ozone readings (.076 ppm or above over an eight-hour period). These readings were scattered around the state over 33 out of 39 different monitors and over 21 different days. Most of the high ozone days to date have occurred in the Charlotte area and in the Triad.

Links to recent JLF reports on ozone:

http://www.johnlocke.org/research/show/spotlights/234
http://www.johnlocke.org/research/show/spotlights/229