Its over! The G77 (the new world order) have delivered a "roadmap" to the USA to follow through 2009.... and beyond, uhh.

Why would profit based companies spend any profit working out how to cut emmissions, voluntarily ?

America was founded, as you Brits might recall, on the principle of individual liberty - the principle that individuals should be free to do what they want to do, limited only in that one individual has no right to limit another's similar liberty - typically this would mean, to cause them tangible harm.

The next question is, who bears the burden of proof as to whether an alleged harm is real?

Practically speaking, if that burden rests on the individual wishing to engage in an activity, and he has to first lay to rest all allegations put forth by persons who for their own reasons want to limit or preclude that activity, then simply by virtue of having to bear this burden he will not be able to engage in the activity at least at the same level - even if he can prove a negative, it will be highly costly to do so.

Furthermore when the chosen activity is otherwise productive, such as transportation or energy production, there are societal benefits from it, which is all the more reason to put the burden on those alleging the harm.

Thus the burden of proof in our country rests not on the individual but on those making the allegation - and this is a matter of love of freedom, not "selfishness" or "greed."

While emissions from factories, power plants and cars have been proven to cause other harms, every component in those emissions that has been shown to cause those harms is already strictly regulated by the EPA and similar state-level bodies.

We simply do not agree that the burden of proof with respect to CO2 being the proximate cause of the 20th century warming has been met. And what we see of the process actually CREATES and FOSTERS skepticism - the revision of the climate history to eliminate or downplay prior warm periods when CO2 levels were lower, for example, and the various contradictory claims as to what global warming in turn will product (e.g., more/stronger hurricanes versus fewer/weaker hurricanes) as well as the apparent contradiction as to whether global warming, man-made or not, has now begun to stall (it hasn't, or on the other hand, warming causes cooling, or on still another hand, global dimming, also man-made, masks the full effect of CO2). We're skeptics of AGW for the same reasons we were skeptics of Anita Hill - not because we're "conservative" but because if we're supposed to believe a story we'd appreciate it if you'd keep the story straight.

The political question is who bears the burden of proof and what is it - the answer is that those seekingt to curtail otherwise free, productive activity bear the burden of proof and that it be tangible proof, not ever-changing models, and that your story be kept straight.

The science is the matter of providing that proof and keeping the story straight, neither of which has happened.

Unless and until it does we're not "stonewalling" or "delaying," just going about our daily business which nobody can actually prove has anything to do with the weather.