We have a lot of concern on this thread about edification, words used, styles adopted, and capping emissions.

The point blithely ignored is that there is no reason to cap emissions.

That would only be necessary if human emissions had any effect on global warming, or if CO2 were not a beneficial gas.

Perhaps for our edification someone could produce some evidence that there is any scientific basis for any assertion that emissions should be capped.

I am sure that there is no such science, and I suspect that the reason the pro-cappers talk about anything but a valid reason why anything should be capped, is that they wish to avoid the topic.

Everyone has their own style. Curmudgeon’s is at least direct, soundly based, and informative, which is more than I can say for some others.

Leo, the science is only in serious doubt if you avoid information that comes from institutions and scientists that actually study climate and insist on getting your information filtered through sources that start with the premise that human induced climate change has no sound basis. If you can't find evidence for it you're obviously looking only in places that are telling you what you want to hear; that it's not true.

Give me NCAR, NOAA, NASA, Hadley CRU, CSIRO, BoM and the world's leading universities and Academies of Science over mining geologists/mining company directors turned controversial book writers and preachers to the disbelievers like Plimer or Carter any day.

You want to bet the future of the world that all science knows about climate is so wrong there's not a chance they could be right? Dangerously irresponsible - and gullible - is what I think.

Ken, I carefully read your post, which purports to answer mine and did not find a reference to any scientific basis for AGW, and if there is no such basis then there is no reason to cap emissions.

The only basis anyone has put forward is the unscientific guess by the IPCC that it is "very likely". That opinion is backed by 5 unconflicted scientists.

The settled science is that natural cycles govern climate, leaving no room for guesses about likelihood with no scientific basis.

Anyone can have a guess, and it is pitiful to see the body which says it has reports from 2500 scientists, reduced to having a guess, through lack of any scientific basis for its assertion.

My guess is that there is no measureable effect of human emissions on climate, because that is the scientific status. No one has measured it, because it has no effect. We do not know if it exists, because there is no scientific evidence. Human emissions have not been shown to have any effect on climate.

Remember when the IPCC were going to find the "hot spot", which would be the "signature" for AGW?

That never happened, but there was no big announcement that AGW could not be proved, and "very likely" did not exist.

There is, however, a petition signed by more than 31,000 scientists urging that no action be taken in the absence of a scientific basis, because no such basis is available now.

OK, Ken? No need for caps.

Efficiency is doing more with less. The fact that we do more with the same amount does not invalidate the argument that efficiency is good for sustainability. In fact it is the only way we are going to get a sustainable economy.

The important thing is not to do things that are obviously bad because we think they cost us less. It is obviously bad to dig vast amounts of coal and burn it when there are other alternative more benign ways to produce energy.

It costs less to produce a kilo watt hour of electricity from the solar panel on my roof now that it is installed than it costs to deliver a kilo watt hour of electricity from a coal fired power station in the Hunter Valley.

The repayment costs on my solar panel will repay the capital cost within 40 years (well within the expected life of the panel).

So even that most "inefficient" of renewable energy a solar panel does much more with less as the energy inputs to make the solar panel are returned within two or three years.

There is a magic pudding and it is called investment in building new productive assets. Our finance industry is geared to favour the purchase of existing assets over the building of new assets. If instead of inflating house prices with new loans we invested in new renewable energy plants with low interest loans we would solve the ghg emissions problem within ten years.

The Second-Law-Of-Thermodynamics states : "the less energy you use,the greater the disorder & the closer to DEATH(thermodynamic equilibrium)you become"

Its a neat trick for high IQ, rich, Media savvy, big Energy users to get all the dumb low IQ breeders to use less Energy using a moral blackmail as a scam.

They then are FREE to use more energy, become more sexually competitive and have more Masserati & private jet fun while the rest of humanity get disordered, uncompetitive, hormonally stagnant and dies.

Reminds me of the Superman on the Empire State Building Joke:

After demonstrating how air currents on the east side of the building will bring you back onto the viewing platform if you jump, a well dressed man serially convinces 3 civvies to jump to their deaths, much to his delight.

Upon seeing this unfold the elevator driver goes up to him and says: "That's a mean trick Superman!"

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too
Because only God knows what you'll go through
You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You'll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens
And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh

Don't tell me to use LESS N-ER-GEE 'cuz I'm close to the edge
Everyone competin' wid hard MegaJoules not to lose their head