Is ID falsifiable by any kind of experiment?

Refuting one argument would do little to refute the idea of intelligent design. And the followers of intelligent design are reluctant to abandon arguments even if they have been refuted.Intelligent design is not science, nor is it trying to be science. It is primarily religious apologetics, and of a rather dishonest and nasty sort.

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I'm puzzled by ID proponents like Behe and Meyer saying that if certain experiments produced certain results, ID would be falsified.

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It’s because they want to be able to say that ID is falsifiable, it’s all part of the attempt to pass ID off as science.

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That is somewhat an unusual statement for an ID proponent to make unless they had already evaluated and presented evidence backing up such a statement.

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False. It’s a major strand of ID.

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And it wouldnt be claimed on theoretical grounds, but instead on observational/scientific grounds.

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False again. See Dembski’s abuse of the No Free Lunch Theorems.

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The question is somewhat backwards, as an ID proponent would rule out chance/necessity even before considering design. Nonetheless, for ID there are limits as to how a designer would operate.

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The question is not at all backwards - it is exactly what is needed to make ID falsifiable. And no, ID does not propose any limits on how the designer might operate.

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I think you might be confused as to what ID constitutes, as well as what criteria would qualify as something falling under design.

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ID is a religious and political movement aimed at supporting Creationism. It’s only interested in making a pretence at science for apologetic purposes. And it must be noted that ID is at the nastier and most dishonest end of apologetics.The only real criterion for design in ID is “an ID proponent says so”.

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We would need plausible evolutionary paths with evidencial support for some critical processes in species we see today.

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You are free to choose whatever criteria you want, but I don’t think that science should use that one. The existence of unsolved problems - assuming that it is unsolved - is not sufficient to reject an otherwise successful theory. Really you would need a better explanation - one that addressed all the evidence and offered more than an ad hoc explanation for butterfly metamorphosis.I will also note that the evolution of the mammalian jaw was thought to be such a problem, until the intermediate forms were discovered. If we only have a lack of an explanation how can we be sure that it isn’t simply because we don’t have the data that we need to find the answer?

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I would lean towards intelligent creation, rather than gradual steps of evolution. Also due to the fact that I would expect a line of gradual evolution to produce more branches, other than just the "fully" completed butterfly species.

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But we do have more branches. Butterflies are not the only insects that undergo metamorphosis at all. So that is not much of an objection.

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As there are many examples like this, without any plausible intermediates, being as objective as possible, evidence is in favor of intelligent creation over gradual evolution.

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Is it? I don’t think so. Until you provide an explanation that is actually better then I don’t think you can say that. An ad hoc explanation for butterfly metamorphosis that doesn’t explain the data favouring evolution is not worth anything scientifically.

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I don't think it's scientific to cling onto a theory that is not plausible, do you?

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I don’t think that God-of-the-Gaps style arguments are scientific, and that’s what you’re offering. And if the scientists actually working in the field find evolution to be plausible, why should your contrary opinion matter?

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If UCA fails, we need to reconsider our origins.
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UCA is not about to fail. Even if we accepted your butterfly argument and even if we accepted it pointed to an intelligent designer why would we conclude that butterflies were an individual creation? Surely it would make more sense to assume that the designer worked by using genetic engineering to modify a moth.

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We have branches of species with larvae gradually changing into their adult form, and branches of species where larvae/caterpillars that completely rid of their larvae form to grow their adult appearance

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We have species of insects where the juveniles are simply smaller adults.We have species of insects where the adult (imago) stage is notably different from the juvenile (nymph), but do not undergo complete metamorphosis.For some of those species of insects the form that emerges from the eggs (pro-nymph) is different from the nymph.Of the species of insects that pupate we have some which start the transformation to adult form before entering the pupa stage (silkworm larvae have the beginnings of wings).It seems that we do have adequate intermediates, allowing for the timescales involved.Current thinking - which is not hard to find - is that the larva is a development of the pro-nymph and the pupa is a development of the nymph.

Your argument assumes the availability of unlimited resources, and the absence of environmental hazards that might have driven the UCA to extinction. Neither assumption is very plausible, according,y it is your argument that should be rejected.

The “non-living material” does not have to run out. If the amount available at any given time is finite, then there will be competition and the less successful species will eventually become extinct.Faster reproduction does not require changing to a new diet, so that is still a way - and not the only one - in which competition could occur, and favour the newer organism.You have not addressed the issue of environmental hazards.Accordingly both objections stand.

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Do you have any concrete evidence of environmetnal harards that happened to kill off all UCA and all closely related UCA species, globally?
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The question of course is whether the LUCA should be expected to survive to the present day. There is in fact well-known evidence of an early environmental disaster that may well have caused a mass extinction. In fact it’s so well known that you really ought to know of it.Adding that issue to the problem of competition and it is quite implausible that the LUCA would survive to the present day.