Usual response is some blather about alternative energy (easily shown to be inadequate, especially given other environmental constraints)...
Then show it

...conservation (law of diminishing returns)...
Explain it

...lifestyle changes (kills economy, and besides, won't happen without major force)
Prove it

What you do is rhetorics, not a scientific discussion.

I think the guy has just got lost in his own model, which tries to liken such a complex thing as the human civbilisation with a simple physical system, employing a constant relationship between global energy use and the civilisation's accumulated economic productivity. This is just naive...

But talking about physical modelling: Is it not intuitively correct to assume that no system can grown limitless, that there must be an upper bound for everything? Then why does our economy need to grow all the time? Why can't we just be content with a very high output? Does it need to increase all the time? And worse, does the growth need to increase all the time? This is like driving a car very fast not being enough, but we need to accelerate all the time right into infinity. This is not possible according to physics, but according to economics it is not only possible but demanded. Silly... which is exactly why Economics is not a science and because there is no Nobel Prize for economics.

Misquote? Read for yourself:
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:y8CuWLUgkMkJ:beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/+http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a

section "Pirate My Book?":
My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I’m good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can’t actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it’s around on plenty of “free e-book” sites and on RapidShare. There are even links on Twitter to torrents like this. I am happy for you to pirate my book, but I’m NOT A LAWYER, and I can’t guarantee what Apress would do about it – so you’d be doing it off your own back! So, uhm, don’t pirate it? ;-) The only condition, of course, if you do is that if you like the book and you think a print copy would be swell to own, please buy one – even if it’s just for someone you know who wants to learn to program! :-)

Google Cache:
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:y8CuWLUgkMkJ:beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/+http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a

So the author's main conclusion was to avoid the major publishers.

But then again he writes under the section "Pirate My Book?":
My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I’m good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can’t actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it’s around on plenty of “free e-book” sites and on RapidShare. There are even links on Twitter to torrents like this. I am happy for you to pirate my book, but I’m NOT A LAWYER, and I can’t guarantee what Apress would do about it – so you’d be doing it off your own back! So, uhm, don’t pirate it? ;-) The only condition, of course, if you do is that if you like the book and you think a print copy would be swell to own, please buy one – even if it’s just for someone you know who wants to learn to program! :-)

There are about 300 million people in America. 300 million / 5 million = 60. 12 / 60 = 1/5. Its your wildly inaccurate statement that I was referencing, not a fact. Your assertion that 1 in 5 million was in the circumstance that I and the dozen gamers I knew in the same circumstance would indicate that our population of 12 was a 5th of the US population in that circumstance.

Yes, my inclusion in that group is in the past tense, I having moved since then, and some of my friends having finally gotten broadband. It was however the recent past, and a lot of people are still there.

As for your comment about rural mississippi? Get your head out of your ass. There really are a lot of people there that have interests other than nascar, drugs or getting knocked up.

If you can show that a specific legal entity or group thereof is contributing significantly to either rising sea levels or health issue resulting from pollution then you are quite welcome to organize the victims into a group and sue for damages. That would count as "significant evidence". You are also welcome to employ liberal degrees of social pressure, which tends to be even more effective in regard to broad externalities such as these and is not limited by hard evidence.

Your "most efficient, easiest option" of prior restraint ("limited permits") and arbitrary fines ("taxes") as a means of coercively regulating others' behavior, however, is simply unacceptable. The proper place for disputes of this nature is the courtroom, where rulings are guided on a case-by-case basis by evidence of damage and intent and ultimately bounded in proportion to the specific offense.

"the golden passport to ticket exemption is the military ID. I've seen it used many times. According to rumors, this works better for enlisted personnel than for officers. I know a guy who was a sergeant in the army. He was often pulled over, but NEVER ticketed."

I call bullshit. If, in fact, you knew such a sergeant, then he was an extremely good bullshitter. A military ID often times makes you a target for a cop's ire, depending on location. Most times, you're better off handing over your license, keeping you military ID in your wallet, and hoping that the cop didn't notice your base parking sticker.

Dumping sewage into rivers was a working system too, until Government went and "broke" it. Think of all of that productivity lost to treating sewage that could be used to build more margaritaville machines.

But there aren't scientists on both sides of the debate. It's science vs. a small cabal of conservative think thanks.

I am somewhat familiar with the literature. The few actually intelligent skeptics out there aren't actually scientists, but businessmen and economists.

This is simple to prove. Try to find 10 articles from the skeptic side, that meet the standards necessary to be published in a journal. (Hint, you can't). Of the paltry number of articles that you do find, look at the field of expertise of the submitters.

The scientific debate will hopefully go on.

The science is settled - it has been for a long time. We know it's happening, and that humans caused it.

Let's hope the political debate is stifled until some meaningful consensus can be reached

Here, here. The debate is purely political. There is science on one side, and a bunch of marketing firms employed by special interest groups on the other side. The truth is being lost because that's what marketing firms do . Somewhat ironically, they are scientific about sowing discord.